H eadlines
Jews of Key West Make Margaritaville Home
NATIONAL LARRY LUXNER | JTA.ORG
KEY WEST, FLORIDA — On
any given afternoon, hundreds
of visitors here patiently line
up for selfies next to a brightly
painted, 12-foot-high concrete
buoy marking the southernmost
point in the continental United
States. Just behind this landmark,
a less obvious monument
overlooks the Atlantic Ocean for
a few days a year: a menorah
erected during Hanukkah by
Chabad Jewish Center of the
Florida Keys & Key West. Billed
as “the nation’s southernmost
menorah,” the gimmick is just
one way that Rabbi Yaakov
Zucker attracts Jews among the
2.5 million tourists who flock to
the Keys annually.

“For a while, there was also a
‘southernmost Christmas tree,’
and then they stopped putting
it there. But I’ve continued my
menorah tradition. People like
these things,” said Zucker, 49,
who often cruises up and down
Duval Street, the epicenter of
Key West’s famous party strip,
in a modified golf cart, chatting
up Jews and trying to convince
men to put on tefillin.

Key West is the southern-
most among a string of islands
off the southern coast of Florida
(called the Keys) that are linked
to Miami via a 113-mile highway
that crosses the water. While the
COVID-19 pandemic devas-
tated local tourism last year and
large cruise ships have yet to
return, Key West’s hotels are
again packed with visitors. Most
are Americans who arrive by
car from the mainland, but the
number of international visitors
is growing.

Once Florida’s most populous
city in the 19th century, Key
West today doesn’t even rank in
the state’s top 150. But among
its 24,000 or so residents are
about a thousand Jews, about
one-third of whom are Israeli
expats, according to Zucker.

12 AUGUST 5, 2021
From left: Sam Kaufman, vice mayor of the city of Key West, and Rabbi
Yaakov Zucker stand in front of the Chabad Jewish Center of the Florida
Keys & Key West.

Another thousand or so Jews
are scattered elsewhere in the
Keys, mainly in island towns
such as Islamorada, Key Largo,
Marathon and Tavernier.

“When I first came to Key
West, I called my dad up and
said, ‘They must really love Jews
here. Every store has a mezuzah,’”
recalled Sam Kaufman, the vice
mayor here and a regular at
Chabad services.

That tradition dates back
to the 1920s, when the local
merchants’ association ruled that
only people who resided perma-
nently in Key West could operate
businesses on Duval Street.

“The Jews weren’t full-time
residents because there was
no rabbi and no kosher food.

So they left on Thursday night
by boat and came back on
Sunday,” Kaufman said. “After
that ruling, the Jews became
full-time residents.”
The Chabad
center, housed in a former Lutheran
church on Trinity Drive, is a
relative newcomer to Key
West. Jews have lived since
1886 in this laid-back fishing
town nicknamed the Conch
Republic, which has inspired
hard-drinking celebrities from
novelist Ernest Hemingway to
songwriter Jimmy Buffett. That’s
the year a massive fire destroyed
Key West’s commercial district,
creating opportunities for
Yiddish-speaking peddlers and
shopkeepers from New York,
according to Arlo Haskell’s
2017 book, “Jews of Key West:
Smugglers, Cigar Makers and
Revolutionaries (1823-1969).”
In the 1890s, some of these
early Jewish pioneers helped
buy weapons for José Martí’s
anti-Spanish revolution in Cuba,
only 90 miles to the south. And
in 1899 — just two years after
Theodor Herzl’s first Zionist
Congress in Basel, Switzerland
— the Federation of American
Zionists opened a Key West
branch to raise funds for an
eventual Jewish homeland in
Palestine. Congregation B’nai Zion, a
nonaffiliated synagogue with
about 100 members, is the oldest
synagogue in South Florida.

Established in 1887, it occupies
an entire city block along
United Street, not far from its
original location at the Sidney
M. Aronovitz U.S. Courthouse,
named after a prominent Jewish
lawyer and third-generation Key
West resident.

“A lot of Jews come to Key
West to disappear from the
radar,” said the synagogue’s
Israeli-born rabbi, Shimon
Dudai, 76. “Most of the time
they become family.”
There can be a disconnect
between the Israelis and local
Jews, Dudai said.

“Local Jews don’t mix much
with the Israelis,” he said.

“When I first came here, I went
to every store and met all the
Israelis. I knew they were not the
kind of people who would come
to a place considered Reform.

That’s the reason we’re not
JEWISH EXPONENT
Key West, Florida, is much closer to Havana, Cuba, than to Miami, as is
apparent on this storefront in Mallory Square. 
Photos by Larry Luxner
affiliated, although my congre-
gation welcomes all streams of
Judaism.” Meir Mergi, 42, is originally
from the Haifa suburb of Kiryat
Ata. He’s lived here for 20 years,
selling T-shirts, other clothing
and local souvenirs at his Duval
Street shop.

“I never planned to stay in
America. It was supposed to be
a three-month vacation,” Mergi
said. “Key West is the best place
to be if you want a quiet life. I’m
very happy here.”
From April to June of 2020,
as coronavirus infections spiked
across South Florida, Key West
and the other islands were
closed off to nonresidents. Police
blocked the Overseas Highway
at the boundary with Miami-
Dade County.

“If you didn’t show an ID
that you lived in the Keys, you
couldn’t get in,” said Zucker,
who is also a chaplain with
the Monroe County Sheriff’s
Department. “To get back into
town, I had to write our Israeli
guests a letter that they were
coming to see me.”
These days, Kaufman is
optimistic about the future.

Crime is low, and Key West is
packed with visitors.

“There’s pent-up demand for
tourism, it’s a safe place and it’s
drivable,” Kaufman said. “During
spring break, hotel rooms were
going for $1,200 a night, so we’re
not really suffering.”
In fact, some Jewish retirees
moved to the Florida Keys during
the pandemic to escape public
health restrictions up north.

“I must have gotten at least 30
phone calls from people wanting
to move to the Keys from New
York and Chicago,” said Zucker,
who hosted over 100 people at
Chabad’s Passover seder this
year. “After coronavirus, they
want to be off the grid. They
don’t want to be in big cities.

People saw what happened,
and nobody has insurance that
some new variant won’t happen
again.” The Keys Jewish Community
Center, located at Mile Marker
93 along the Overseas Highway,
is the only synagogue between
Key West and Homestead on the
Florida mainland.

The congregation’s president,
Joyce Peckman, who settled
here in 2003 from New York,
said that about half of the 170
member families have second
homes elsewhere, with some of
them spending only a few weeks
a year in the Keys. The JCC once
had a Hebrew school with 10
children, but they all grew up
and moved away. More than
half intermarried, she said.

“If I had young children,
I would not move here,”
Peckman said. “The vibe here
in the Upper Keys is very laid
back. People came here for
diving, fishing, relaxing and
getting away from it all. But
there are very few Jews, and if
you have kids, you want them
to be someplace where there
are other Jewish kids.” l
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM