In Miami, great Jews have shaped the sights, tastes and sounds of the place.
By Irvina Lew
Everybody knows about Miami Beach’s pull for Jews. But few know that, when you walk around, much of what you see results from the influence of an under-appreciated Jewish architect.
Morris Lapidus is responsible for the look of the 1950s resort-style hotels that have become synonymous with Miami and Miami Beach.
In perhaps his greatest achievement, he designed the glamorous, gaudy and glitzy Fontainebleau Hotel in 1954. Decades later, I spent an entire Sunday afternoon with the Odessa born and Columbia University-educated Lapidus, who enhanced,
and some say created, the face of these popular Florida destinations.
It was a just a couple of years before Lapidus died at the age of 98 in 2001, and he chatted vigorously about his career and the critics who labeled the hotels he created in the 50s and 60s — the Fontainebleau, Eden Roc and Americana — “Miami Beach French.” They derided the sweeping curves, unusual shapes and backlit, floating ceilings that attracted so many vacationers to stay on Collins Avenue in hotels that he designed: Sans Souci, Nautilus (where my folks used to stay), the Di Lido, Biltmore Terrace and the Algiers. I hope he lived to learn how much he’s appreciated.
Just today, the developer of the soon-toopen Shelborne, on 18th Street, raved at being able to restore a lobby that Lapidus had designed to its original splendor. And, some postmodernist architects, including Rem Koolhaas and Philippe Starck, call him ‘’a postmodernist long before the term existed.’’ Whenever I visit South Beach, I walk, shop, browse galleries and dine on Lincoln Road, the eight-block pedestrian mall that Lapidus designed in 1960 in the aesthetic of his “Miami Modern.”
The New World Center opened in 2011, nearby, between Lincoln Road, and the Miami Convention Center (adjacent to the Holocaust Memorial and the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens). The Frank Gehry designed structure is the new home for the New World Symphony and an educational institution which prepares students for positions in major world orchestras.
Established in 1987 by Artistic Director Michael Tilson Thomas, the conductor is the grandson of Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, founding members of the Yiddish Theater in America, and he retains the yiddish- keit tradition he learned from his grandmother. MTT, as he is known, grew up in Los Angeles where his parents were in films and where Gehry (famed for the Guggenheim, Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA) used to baby- sit for him. They collaborated on the 756- seat concert hall with its adjacent stacked rehearsal halls and created an attraction where even non-ticket holders can see and hear the performance from the garden.
South Florida has the second largest concentration of Jews in the world, after Israel, at 15%.
The Jewish influence in Miami is extensive and its history is displayed at the Jewish Museum of Florida whose documents claim that “South Florida has the second largest concentration of Jews in the world, after Israel, at 15%.” Miami ranks in the top three American Jewish metropolitan areas, along with New York and Los Angeles.
The museum is just a short walk south from Lincoln Road and its core exhibit, MOSAIC: Jewish Life in Florida, introduces a 235 year timeline that features prime movers in Miami Beach where discrimination was a way of life in the early 20th century. Jews could not live above 5th Street which is why the museum, within two historic former synagogues, is located on 3rd Street within the former Beth Jacob synagogue, built in the 1930s. Miami’s first Jewish congregation is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Architect Henry Hohauser designed the Art Deco structure with a Moorish copper dome; inside, there’s a marble bimah, Art Deco chandeliers and 77 stained-glass windows.
What interested me most was the exhibit Growers, Grocers and Gefilte Fish: a Gastronomical Look at Florida’s Jews & Food. Fact is, that until recent years, the only reason I ever went to the tip of South Beach was to wait on line for the wonderful
stone crabs, fried green tomatoes and coleslaw at Joe’s Stone Crab. (During my recent trip my friend and I traveled there from our hotel, the Delano, on 17th Street, via the South Beach Local Bus which costs only 25 cents).
We took that same Washington Avenue bus to visit the Wolfsonian Museum in South Beach, where the permanent collection within the former Art Deco storage facility ranges from postal boxes and postage stamps to enormous and decorative Art Deco designs. Its founder, businessman and collector Mitchell Wolfson Junior, founded Wometco Enterprises in 1925 and served as the first Jewish mayor of Miami Beach in 1943.
In my early adulthood, we only used to drive through the then dilapidated Art Deco district to wait on line at the popular Joe’s Stone Crab, passing low-rise, pastel-colored buildings where elderly Jews rocked on porches. That South of Fifth neighborhood has transformed into the chic SoFi where young adults rock the night away, residents of high-rise waterfront apartments dine at de Rodriguez Cuba, a swank Cuban restaurant in the Hilton Bentley Hotel and the international elite are flock to the just-opened Cavalli Miami, a fashionable restaurant and lounge created by lifestyle icon Roberto Cavalli.
When Michelle Bernstein, who is both Latin and Jewish, opened her first restaurant South of Fifth, before she made a name for herself at Azul in the Mandarin Oriental and at Michy’s and before she was a James Beard award-winner, she was a pioneer in that SoFi neighborhood.
What I learned at the Jewish Museum, where Michelle Bernstein has lectured and which offers Jewish Food Tours, is that Joe and Jennie Weiss, who established Joe’s Stone Crab, were the first Jews on Miami Beach in 1913. Their original lunch
counter serving fresh fish sandwiches has long been one of the city’s most popular restaurants.
In downtown Miami, on the west coast of Biscayne Bay, The Perez Art Museum, within an imposing glass-walled concrete structure opened in the 29- acre Bicentennial Park (formerly Museum Park) in December, 2013 across the causeway from the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. This Hew Locke’s boat installation Perez Art Museum
Photo: Irvina Lew A pocket watch owned by George Dzialynsky (1857-1937), the first known Jewish boy born in Florida
Photo: Irvina Lew inviting museum is lifted above storm-surge level by stilts that become columns supporting a shaded
canopy from which vertical gardens — designed to withstand salt, wind, water and air — hang.
Adirondack chairs provide seating on the verandah and a wide staircase links it to the bayside promenade. The entry garden offers raised planting beds encircled by white, curved sculpted concrete seating. The centerpiece of the interior is a
stairway as large as a gallery-size staircase connecting both exhibition levels that is used as an auditorium enclosed by sound-insulating curtains. One exhibit, open until April 2014, showcases the newest video project by acclaimed Israeli native, Yael Bartana, called Inferno 2013.
The museum’s Verde Restaurant has indoor and outdoor seating facing the cruise ships on Biscayne Bay. (For the first time ever, I didn’t rent a car in South Beach; we traveled by public bus from Ian Schrager’s swank Delano to the museum, $5 round trip).
Jewish influence in Miami extends into smaller, kosher kitchens: in South Beach on West Street and on 17th Street where Temple Emanuel is located; along 41st Street where The Forge reigns and near The Shul, in Bal Harbor where the St. Regis and the Bal Harbor Mall are located. It is also apparent in luxury, oceanfront apartment buildings that are being constructed
with Shabbat elevators.
People from around the globe flock to Miami to work, cruise and vacation. The attraction is more than the sunshine, flowers and palm trees; more than ocean, bay and beaches. There’s a thriving art scene which crescendos in December with Art Basel, dynamic cultural options, an exciting design district, fabulous multicultural restaurants, glamorous hotels and the world’s finest designer boutiques. While most people, particularly in the United States, associate Jews with Miami, too few realize the extraordinary contribution of so many specific individuals.
On your next trip to Miami, add a visit to South Beach, admire the hotels on Collins Avenue, stroll on Lincoln Road, read the plaques on the walls in the museums and feel proud.
Irvina Lew, a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and Society of American Travel Writers writes about what she loves, including France, art and history. www.irvinalew.com