The unassuming five-unit condominium at 173 Peruvian Ave. in Palm Beach bears little resemblance to the cottage that stood there in 1918.
Buried beneath a century of renovations, the site once housed a kosher inn and restaurant operated by Emil and Eva Verschleisera. At the time, it was one of the few places in Palm Beach County where Jewish residents and tourists could gather openly.
“Jews have never been safe,” says Marcia Jo Zerivitz, the founding executive director of the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU and a leading historian on the state’s Jewish heritage.
She points to a timeline that began with legal exclusion. For 250 years following Ponce de Leon’s arrival in 1513, only Catholics were permitted to settle in Florida. It was not until 1763 that Jews could step onto the peninsula as themselves.
Today, with those religious discriminations 263 years behind us, Palm Beach County boasts one of the most significant centers of Jewish life in North America. But it also has become the state’s hot spot of antisemitic activity.
The county led Florida in the number of antisemitic incidents in 2023, when there were 83, and 2024, when there were 51, an average of one per week. According to the 2025 Anti-Defamation League report, the county remains a major hub for mounting hostility, forcing a population of nearly 300,000 to weigh its record expansion against the heavy cost of a “security tax.”
Presence of antisemitism raises the cost of living openly
For Josephine Gon, executive director of the Palm Beach Center to Combat Antisemitism & Hatred, the current climate represents a fundamental shift. She notes that while antisemitism existed previously, the scale of activity following the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, has reached unprecedented levels in the county.
“We spend an enormous amount of money making sure that we are safe and that our communities feel safe,” Gon said. “It is a routine part of our lives that we have security at all our Jewish institutions and synagogues, and we have to do that so that our community feels safe to be Jewish, to be proud and to be active.”
The cost of that safety — in building design, in security measures, in police presence and more — is substantial.
Michael Hoffman, the president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County, says the federation’s security budget has grown to $4.6 million today from $250,000 four years ago, funded through a combination of private donations and government grants.
“We have to build up our Jewish infrastructure to best serve the needs of the very rapid growth of Jewish life here in Palm Beach County,” Hoffman said. “We’re not necessarily this seasonal, sleepy, older adult community anymore. The average age in downtown West Palm Beach is about 36 years old right now.”
And, in the Jewish community, Hoffman said the fastest growing demographic has been families with children. He noted that the need for safety measures reaches far beyond the county line.
“We are basically managing security from Boynton Beach through Palm Beach County,” Hoffman said. “We also provide community oversight for Jewish communities stretching all the way up through Volusia and Flagler County.”
Keeping worship spaces safe a continuous effort, rabbi says
Keeping an open community while maintaining a secure facility is a daily priority for Temple Israel in West Palm Beach. After selling its longtime home on North Flagler Drive and spending six weeks worshipping at a nearby Episcopal church, the county’s oldest congregation is now establishing its new campus at 2101 North Australian Ave.
For Rabbi Ryan Daniels, the transition to the new campus is shaped by a constant, underlying need for safety.
“It’s our new reality for rabbis today that safety, both the physical safety of our buildings and the procedures we have around safety protocols — it’s our reality that we can’t avoid it,” Daniels said. “I think often in interfaith spaces, I find colleagues outside of the Jewish community sometimes just don’t realize the implications on our program.”
During the transition between buildings, the congregation found itself in what Daniels described as “a wilderness of sorts.” Holy Trinity Episcopal Church offered their space for Friday night services, a gesture Daniels called a “demonstration of friendship” at a time when global tensions were high.
While the stay at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church was a demonstration of friendship, Daniels noted that the day-to-day requirements of Jewish life now involve a level of caution many don’t see.
“We have to wrestle with these difficult questions and difficult trainings,” he said, “to help us ensure that our people can learn, pray, connect, volunteer in Jewish spaces that feel comfortable and safe enough.”
As the congregation develops the new site into a Center for Jewish Life, Daniels said campus design is being driven by the concerns of the present with physical protection a top priority.
“One of the first things that we hear loud and clear, particularly from my peers, from parents with young children, is that this space needs to be safe,” he said. “They want their children to be able to learn and thrive and have fun and celebrate and be Jewish in a place that the parents don’t have to be so vigilant.”
On the legislative front, hope for antisemitism task force
While religious leaders work to secure their own buildings, a broader effort is underway to make that security a permanent fixture of Florida law.
In the state legislature, state Sen. Alexis Calatayud is sponsoring a bill (SB 1072) that would create a permanent 18-member Antisemitism Task Force. The proposal comes as a direct response to a “reality of increased antisemitic threats,” said Calatayud, R-Kendall.
In committee, Calatayud has cited data showing that statewide threats against the Jewish community have tripled since 2020. Through the years, these threats have taken a variety of forms, from individual acts of harassment and vandalism to bomb threats targeting gathering places such as schools.
The bill passed the Florida Senate unanimously in March, but has not won approval from the Florida House.
The task force aims to move beyond reactive laws and create “nodes across the state” that can share real-time shifts in threats. By bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders — from law enforcement to regional civic leaders — the state hopes to stay ahead of an “amorphous and ever-changing” problem.
“What I do hope the task force does is, as conditions change on the ground and online in Florida into the future, we have a nimble and engaged stakeholder group who can directly provide the legislature and the future governor with, ‘Hey, this is the new way that this is happening,’ ” Calatayud said.
“It doesn’t take just one senator or one representative … to have a personal connection to something. It becomes an institutional element of the state government.”
One of the task force’s first requirements would be a report focusing on schools and universities, specifically looking at how digital media is used to foster hate. Calatayud pointed to the way antisemitic tropes evolve in online subcommunities as a reason to prioritize “digital literacy” for young people.
“Antisemitic tropes kind of evolve into different forms, but they’re all usually the same,” Calatayud said. “This is not about telling people how to think. The goal would really be, for example, for young people and Floridians across the age spectrum, to understand the critical analysis of what’s going on.”
The best way to combat hate? ‘To show up and to live’
Even as security tightens, local leaders say the community is not pulling back.
Hoffman highlighted “Activate Jewish Life,” an initiative designed to move Jewish celebrations into public spaces. A recent event at the Mandel Jewish Community Center in Palm Beach Gardens drew more than 1,000 families, a turnout Hoffman considers more telling than the data found in an incident report.
“The best way to combat antisemitism is leaning into a greater level of Jewish pride,” Hoffman said. “We will not let these efforts push us inside.”
For Zerivitz, the historian, the solution is still found in the classroom.
She maintains that Florida’s history curriculum should move beyond a narrow focus and instead highlight the “diversity of peoples” who built the state. While the state has a mandate to teach the Holocaust, Zerivitz believes the school system should adopt curricula that honor the specific contributions of various cultures throughout the year, similar to a model she previously created for American Jewish History Month in Miami-Dade schools.
“When Florida history is being taught, students should learn about the diversity of peoples who have contributed to every area of development,” Zerivitz said.
As Palm Beach County continues to rapidly grow, the Jewish community is pushing to ensure that momentum isn’t overshadowed by security concerns.
“The way that we combat hate of any kind is to show up and to live,” Daniels said. “While it can be uncomfortable and it requires time and effort and sometimes money, I’d encourage folks to really show up and to be present, to be counted.”
Jasmine Fernández is a journalist covering Delray Beach and Boca Raton for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at jfernandez@pbpost.com and follow her on X at @jasminefernandz. Help support our work. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Antisemitism won’t stop county Jewish community from living with pride
Reporting by Jasmine Fernández, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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