Miami Beach had roughly 60,000 people in Jewish households, 62 percent of the total population, in 1982, but only 16,500, or 19 percent of the population, in 2004, said Ira Sheskin, a demographer at the University of Miami who conducts surveys once a decade. The decline — due mostly to elderly Jews dying or getting priced out after the city’s Art Deco revival, but also to the migration of others to Broward and Palm Beach Counties as greater Miami became more Hispanic — has forced old-timers to scour for hints of their past.
The area's last kosher resort, The Saxony, closed in 2005 to make way for more condominiums, and Beth David (the oldest synagogue) also closed that year when its membership dropped to 22. However, the building is now the Jewish Museum of Florida, preserving such items as mah-jong sets and anti-Semitic real estate ads ("always a view, never a Jew"). Those with "Hebrew or Syrian blood" could not rent or buy north of Fifth Street until the 1950s.
We used to visit Miami when I was a little kid and I particularly remember one memorable train trip from New York with my favorite stuffed animal, a wolf named - what else? - Wolfie. I remember eating at Wolfie's Rascal House then (and on later visits through the years), but I'm not sure if my Wolfie was named for the deli. Alas, Wolfie's is on the demolition list to be replaced by yet another condo.
According to the story, Wolfie's storefront will be made part of the new building in a salute to nostalgia. It had really good lean corn beef sandwiches, although my tastes still run to fresh roast turkey breast on rye with Russian dressing and real sour pickles (none of those half-sours, please!).
How can we talk about deli during Passover?
Posts
This is true, not many people even remember it, but there were a good number of Jewish households in the Miami Beach area around two decades ago, but the place is mostly populated by a more Hispanic population now, hence the absence of kosher resort in the area now.
ReplyDelete