This is Part One of the author’s two-part blog about growing up in West Palm Beach and her journey toward becoming a Zionist.
I didn’t grow up in a Zionist home. In fact, I first heard the word Zionist when I joined Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, at the age of 26. I did grow up in a Jewish home, though. My mother lit candles every Friday evening. We attended the family service at our synagogue on the first Friday of every month, and I sang in the choir.
We went to High Holiday services, and I attended Sunday Hebrew School. I had a bat mitzvah and then a confirmation ceremony (a tradition introduced by Reform Judaism where the more mature student “confirms” a commitment to Judaism and to Jewish life).
My parents were both raised in orthodox homes in Brooklyn, but once they married and moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, in the early 1950s, they left those traditions behind and became Reform Jews. Temple Israel, West Palm Beach’s first synagogue, founded in 1923 by the six Jewish families who lived in this emerging community, was a Reform temple and that’s the one my parents joined.
During the 1950s and 1960s, when I was growing up, there were 1,000 Jews in all of Palm Beach County. There were no Jews in Boca Raton, Delray, Lantana or Lake Worth. In fact, the Boca Raton Country Club did not allow Jews. The same was true for The Breakers and the Sailfish Club in Palm Beach.
In 1962, the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County, located on the sixth floor of an office building in downtown West Palm Beach, purchased a piece of land and opened Camp Shalom, a Jewish day camp. One of the first campers to attend, I was in first grade and there was only one other first grader at camp out of a total of 15 campers. The camp consisted of one little house, where the cook named Pearl and her husband, Henry, who was the caretaker and bus driver, lived. The surrounding area was completely baron. There was no swimming pool at the camp; to swim, we had to take a bus to the army base, located near the airport.
I attended that camp every year from first grade through my senior year of college! (My last two years, I served as the co-head counselor for the junior high school campers, who attended the travel program.) Today, the camp is located at the Mandel Jewish Community Center in Palm Beach Gardens; Lion Country Safari has taken over the original campsite.
How did we end up living in West Palm? My father’s aunt (his mother’s sister) and her husband had moved to West Palm when my dad was still a young boy. He had fallen in love with West Palm when he stayed with them the summer before he entered junior high and had vowed to come back.
His aunt and uncle were co-owners, along with my fathers’ uncles’ brother, of the only Jewish deli in Palm Beach County, called Benny’s. It was located in the heart of Palm Beach, not far from the Flagler Museum.
My Aunt Jeannette was one of the cooks at the deli and I remember going there on Sundays for brunch. She made the absolute best chopped liver and chicken fricassee.
While I was growing up, the Jewish community in West Palm grew too, but it was still small enough that every Jew knew every other Jew. With only two major synagogues then, you either went to Temple Israel or Temple Beth El. (There was also a very small temple in Lake Worth and an orthodox synagogue in Palm Beach, but it mainly had older members who were not permanent residents.)
I was one of two Jewish children in my elementary school and one of six in my junior high school. Out of my high school graduation class of over 800 students, I was one of 10 Jewish students. Surprisingly, our student council president and secretary were both Jewish.
There was a girl in my elementary school that I had been friends with for several years. One day, she told me that her mother said she couldn’t play with me anymore because I didn’t believe in G-d. I was in fourth grade and really didn’t understand why she thought that.
Later, I found out from my mother that some non-Jews thought that because Jews did not believe Jesus was the messiah, we did not believe in G-d. That was my first encounter with antisemitism. It would not be my last.
When I was in high school, one morning I arrived to be greeted by swastikas, painted on the school walls. That same year, I had a biology teacher who had a “Jew” seat in his class. Since there were only a few Jewish students in my grade and none of us were in his class at the same time, he made sure that we all sat in the designated Jew seat. He gave all of us a grade of D on every test we took, even if we got the answers right.
I remember that our parents called the Anti-Defamation League and reported him, but not enough changed. He still sat us in the Jew seat, but at least our grades began to reflect what we really earned.
While the Jewish community of West Palm Beach got larger as I advanced through the elementary grades, I still didn’t have many Jewish friends, even though my parents had all Jewish friends. They socialized with those friends through the temple, sisterhood and men’s club. Some had kids my age, but we all went to different elementary schools.
Each year, I remember that I had to participate in the Christmas show. In the sixth grade, I was put on student patrol and, each morning, I had to march into class to the hymn, Onward Christian Soldiers. Then I had to say the Lord’s Prayer. Our schools did not close for the Jewish High Holidays, and I remember being really angry that I could never win the perfect attendance award because I took off for those holidays.
I write this Jewish history of West Palm Beach, the place where I grew up, because I know most people think of Palm Beach County as the home of a huge, growing Jewish population. But this is a relatively new phenomenon, which had its impetus when Robert and Irwin Levy opened Century Village in 1968. Robert Levy was good friends with my parents, and their son Mark was co-head counselor with me in Camp Shalom’s travel program. So my dad was offered a condominium at pre-construction prices. Ironically, he passed on the offer because he just didn’t think that Jews would come to West Palm Beach. Boy was he wrong!
Despite the Jewish population’s growth, Palm Beach County remained very antisemitic. ”Ordinary” Jews, such as me and my friends, were not permitted to be members of the Breakers Country Club, though famous and well-known Jews, such as the Rothschilds, were allowed to join. Many of the clubs had Jewish “quotas.” It wasn’t until the early 1970s that this changed, and my friends and I were able to have cabanas for the summer.
Looking back, I have to say that it was hard to embrace a Jewish identity in the early years of my childhood. Given the antisemitism in my school, the fact that I had few Jewish friends and that those friends didn’t embrace their Jewish identity, it’s not surprising. (Most of my Jewish friends, especially my female friends, did not have bar or bat mitzvahs. Many did not take the Jewish High Holidays off because teachers were permitted to give tests on those days.) It wasn’t until I entered junior high that my identity as a Jew changed. I continue this story in Part Two of my blog, coming shortly.
