Jewish roots reach deep into Orlando’s past, can be traced
More than 50 children would participate in a closing celebration of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, the Orlando Sentinel reported on Dec. 21, 1941, noting the event had extra significance because it coincided with the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights and the nation’s guarantee of religious liberty.
Just two weeks after Pearl Harbor, that 1941 ceremony began with the national anthem and a prayer for the nation’s leaders. It took place at the Congregation Ohev Shalom synagogue on Eola Drive in Orlando. It was a time when folks outside the Jewish community knew little about Hanukkah, which this year begins today at sundown and lasts until sundown on Dec. 10. It was also a time when little had been recorded about the extensive history of Florida’s Jewish community.
We know much more now, thanks in good measure to the work of Marcia Jo Zerivitz, founding executive director of the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU in Miami Beach. From 1984 to 1992, Zeriwitz traveled 250,000 miles around the state, gathering material for the traveling MOSAIC exhibit about the Jewish experience in Florida, which eventually became the core exhibit of the Jewish Museum in Miami Beach. She collected 1,200 items in Orlando.
Roots and memory
In conjunction with the centennial of Congregation Ohev Shalom last year Zerivitz curated another exhibit, “Kehillah: A History of Jewish Life in Greater Orlando,” presented at the Orange County Regional History Center and produced through the work of an impressive task force led by Roz Ettinger Fuchs. The team also published a book that leaves an essential record for generations.
“For me, this is all about roots and memory,” Zerivitz writes. “Like cut flowers, Jews wither without our roots. Our collective memories are our roots.”
In the Orlando area, those roots run deep. “Jews have lived in Orlando since before it was a city and contributed to the development of Central Florida in every area,” Zerivitz writes. “Their story is an example of the acculturation process of each immigrant group who came to America, then to Orlando,” to start a better life for their families, in freedom and with economic opportunities.
A force downtown
Many families who came to Central Florida began retail businesses, centered in Sanford and in downtown Orlando, where Jewish merchants became a major force from 1900 to 1960, operating 340 stores in Orlando, plus about 30 in surrounding areas.
Among them were Medine’s delicatessen at 49 W. Central Blvd. in the San Juan Hotel, where Milt Medine became famous for his cheesecake. He and his wife, Rae, moved to Orlando after World War II, as did Ethel Gibbs and Irving Gibbs, who opened the influential Gibbs-Louis women’s apparel store at 131 N. Orange Ave. and later added three stores in area malls.
A couple of blocks away, La Belle Furs remains at 351 N. Orange Ave., where it has been since 1957, with a history that goes back to 1919, when founder Sara LaBellman began work in Orlando as a seamstress and tailor. Her grandson, Art Labellman, retired in February, announcing plans to turn the business over to his son Alex and daughter-in-law Santa. With Southeast Steel, La Belle’s remains one of two Jewish-owned businesses in downtown Orlando, continuing a rich heritage that goes back to the 19th century.
Heritage Trail guides
Marcia Zerivitz is also the author, with Rachel Heimovics, of the “Florida Jewish Heritage Trail,” published by Florida’s Division of Historical Resources. It includes interesting Central Florida sites, including the home of Dr. Philip Phillips on Lake Lucerne and the 1920s building near Lake Eola that housed Orlando’s Temple Israel from 1954 to 1966. (That building is now on the National Register of Historic Places and has been converted to the Samsara townhomes.) To download this and other state Heritage Trail publications, visit dos.myflorida.com and click on “Heritage Trail Guides” under Historical Resources.