Florida
Where we have a warm home away from home.
Miami · Orlando · Tallahassee · Key West · Jacksonville
The Journey
Florida is a state you simply cannot place in one box.
Having visited many times, we have gotten to experience almost every end of it. In southern Miami, America suddenly begins to feel Caribbean and Latin. Spanish fills the streets, palm trees line the roads, the ocean is never far away, and the culture feels completely different from Florida farther north. Then you reach parts of North Miami Beach and suddenly, with the kosher restaurants, synagogues, and Orthodox families around you, it can feel like Boro Park all over again.
Driving through the Florida Keys was another experience entirely. We crossed the famous Seven Mile Bridge, the longest bridge in the Keys, with the ocean stretching around us, and eventually reached the famous Southernmost Point marker in Key West. The beaches, colorful streets, and island culture made it feel like we had driven out of America without ever actually leaving it.
Orlando gave us a completely different Florida. We visited Disney more than once, met some of our favorite characters, and traveled around the world through the pavilions at Epcot. For the girls, those visits became some of the most exciting memories of the state.
Then there is Tallahassee. We visited the Capitol complex, where the restored Historic Capitol, with its distinctive red and white striped window awnings, almost looks dressed for America. It felt almost strange that the political center of a state so associated with Miami, beaches, tourism, and retirement sits hundreds of miles away in the Panhandle.
That became part of what fascinated me about Florida. Drive long enough and the state keeps changing. Beaches become wetlands, enormous cities become quiet coastal communities, and new residents and new cultures keep arriving without taking away the character that makes Florida feel like Florida.
Jewish Florida
In Florida, Jewish life was not something we had to go searching for. We lived it.
We ate at kosher restaurants, visited synagogues, encountered Jewish schools and families, and walked through neighborhoods where Hebrew signs and Jewish life were simply part of the street. In South Florida especially, it sometimes felt less like discovering a distant Jewish community and more like arriving at another version of home.
That makes the history even more remarkable. In 1899, Florida had only about 2,500 Jews. Today, roughly 762,000 Jews live in the state, making Florida one of the great centers of Jewish life in America.
The roots go back much further than Miami. Temple Beth El in Pensacola was founded in 1876 as Florida’s first Jewish congregation. Jacksonville developed another early community, while South Florida eventually grew on an entirely different scale.
For us, though, Jewish Florida was less about looking backward and more about seeing what exists today. Hundreds of synagogues and Jewish institutions, an enormous kosher food scene, schools, kollelim, Chabad centers, and communities representing almost every corner of Jewish life.
Florida is not simply a place where Jews live. It has become one of the beacons of Jewish life in America.
What Stayed With Me
Florida is different from most states on this journey because it is not really a place we left behind. Like New York, it feels like a second home.
There is the Florida everyone knows: sunshine, palm trees, beaches, swimming pools, and people escaping the winter. But when you spend enough time there, you begin to feel something else. People seem a little more upbeat. Time moves a little slower. The air somehow feels a little happier. And, of course, the long coast is warmer.
Maybe that is what stays with me most about Florida. We do not really say goodbye to it. We just leave until next time.
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