Should We All Move to Miami?

Like many Jews from the Midwest, I grew up vacationing in Miami on winter break each year. Surfside, to be exact — just a couple buildings up on Collins Avenue from the Surfside condominium collapse, which tragically killed nearly 100 people. There were a couple of kosher establishments nearby on Harding Avenue, and a storefront Chabad simply called “the shul.” Wealthy women in white gloves who drove Rolls-Royces could be seen in the cafés of the elegant Bal Harbour Shops. Wolfie Cohen’s Rascal House was just a couple miles up on A1A; its sprawling Sunday morning lines gave proof it was one of America’s great delis.

Today, Harding Avenue is home to some of the finest kosher restaurants anywhere, and that modest Chabad storefront is now a multi-million-dollar campus.

At some point between my youth and today’s resurgence, Miami fell out of favor for many Jews. The Jewish population in Miami-Dade County declined from roughly 218,000 in 1974 to a low of 113,000 in 2004. Jackie Mason, who frequented Rascal House, had a bit about Jews abandoning Miami that captured the mood perfectly: “Miami used to be a Jewish city. Now it’s gone. You go to Miami Beach today — no Jews. Where did they go? Boca. Everybody goes to Boca. Miami, finished. If a Jew shows up, they think he’s lost.”

On a trip with friends in 2007 I paid my final visit to our beloved Rascal House. The waitress was uncharacteristically nice, which should have been the first sign that something was awry. And the basket of warm rolls was missing the legendary salted pumpernickel. My friend beckoned the waitress: “Where are those rolls?” “We stopped carrying them,” she informed us. “This place is done,” my friend declared, even though the place was packed. He was right. Six months later, in 2008, they shuttered the deli. “Demographic shifts,” I was later told.

But something has happened in the past few years. Like a tide that quietly turns and then rushes back in, Jewish Miami has begun to rise again. According to demographer Ira Sheskin, the broader South Florida Jewish population has rebounded to over 130,000 fueled by domestic migration and international influx. The numbers actually obscure the extent of growth as Miami’s in-migration is offset by the large elderly population that shrinks each year.

I visited Miami for the American Judaism 2026 conference this past February. It was my third visit to South Florida this season. The night before the conference, I sat with a young Jewish couple, both of whom grew up elsewhere. “We love it here,” they told me. “It’s so politically diverse. Some of our friends love Trump. Some of them hate Trump. But no one judges you.”

Jewish Miami is, of course, fabulously ethnically diverse as well, with a huge influx of Jews from Latin America, France, and Israel over the past few decades who bring extraordinary energy. They dance. They sing. They laugh loudly in public. They may be ethnically Ashkenazi, but they are culturally Mizrahi. The community exudes Zionism out of its pores. Love of Israel is not controversial—it’s ambient. During my recent trip, the Jewish Federation CEO Scott Kaufman spoke ebulliently about Miami Jewish life, and it didn’t feel like a sales pitch. It was simply in the air.

Now don’t get me wrong. Southern California is prettier than South Florida by a long shot. There’s a reason people write songs about the light in Los Angeles, and why the cliffs of Malibu make you briefly consider spending your life savings in a fire zone. The air is crisper, the seasons more forgiving, the sunsets objectively superior. But the reason Jews — especially those most committed to Jewish life — are leaving places like California and New York and Toronto (especially Toronto) is that life in these places is becoming increasingly hostile. Leftist mayors indulge the ideological excesses that have seeped into schools and social life. Just as you feel the warm embrace of the beaches of Miami, you feel the cold shoulder of coastal California.

In Miami, you don’t have to worry that your kids are going to be taught to decolonize their country, their people, their workplace and your family. With respect, in LA you do. Maybe it’s a passing phase. Maybe South Florida won’t be immune from the same ideological forces that have reshaped other coastal cities. Maybe the political right will eventually imprint Miami with a cultural conservatism equally unappealing to mainstream Jewish sensibilities. But for now, it’s an absolute haven.

And, for that matter, maybe Southern Cal will wake up from its leftist fever dream. Nah, probably not.

The truth is that in the current political environment, Jews are likely to thrive most in blue cities in red states — places like Austin, Nashville and Atlanta. Blue cities where cultural life feels familiar. Red states where government serves as a check on leftwing ideological excess. Places where schools can’t so easily get away with teaching your kids that Israel is an apartheid state.

You may choose to stay where you are. And that’s fine — we need people willing to fight in coastal cities that no longer seem to appreciate the contributions of Jews. My organization, NAVI, will fight the ideological forces in K-12 education in the Golden State. I, for one, have no immediate plans to move to Miami from my blue area. I’m headed for the mountains of West Virginia, never to be seen again! But if you think I may be right about Miami, you might want to move quickly. Real estate prices are through the roof.

David Bernstein is the Founder and CEO of the North American Values Institute (NAVI).