SEEDS: A VOICE FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES
Having been slaves in ancient Egypt and then experiencing antisemitism in Europe, American Jews are sensitive to injustice. They have marched at the forefront of the battle for civil rights. In Orlando, many Jewish leaders have worked to promote justice and equality. Activists for school desegregation and integration volunteered countless hours at great risk to their personal safety. Others fought to advance the rights of women, to combat antisemitism and, in more recent years, to require equal protection under the law regardless of sexual preferences. Remembering the contributions made by these leaders inspires us to step forward to make today’s Orlando a better community for everyone.
Downtown Orlando Lancaster Park deed restrictions prohibited the sale of homes in the neighborhood to “any person, other than of the Aryan group of the White Caucasian Race,” 1939.
The word “Aryan” is used here to exclude Jews. In 1939, Nazi legislation prevented Jews in Germany from entering designated “Aryan” zones and barred Jews from public schools, universities, theaters and sports facilities. Discriminatory restrictions on home ownership were common in the US at that time, including in many Orlando neighborhoods. In 1926, the US Supreme Court ruled in Corrigan v. Buckley that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited racebased legislation, but private deeds were not covered. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 finally prevented discrimination in housing sales, rentals and financing based on race, color, national origin and religion.
Teresa Brickman Finer
Jerome J. “Jerry” Bornstein spent two decades and thousands of hours of pro bono legal time fighting the Orange County School Board on civil rights issues, including school desegregation and separation of church and state, c. 1970
In 1960, Bornstein filed suit to block daily religious devotionals in schools as a constitutional violation of the separation of church and state. The School Board also modified guidelines on Gideon Bible distribution at schools following this case. Eight years after the US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. The Board of Education (1954), Orange County schools were still segregated. When the Superintendent claimed blacks were satisfied with this system, Bornstein filed suit. His 1962 case, Ellis v. Orange County Board of Public Instruction, resulted in ten years of litigation and finally forced real change.
Ronson J. “Jeff” Petree and David Bornstein
Planning meeting for the lecture series Moral Issues of Our Time, 1965.
Joe and Marion Brechner were broadcasters and powerful advocates for human freedom. Joe covered civil rights before most other American broadcasters and was invited to Mayor Carr’s first Human Relations Committee to address racial relations in 1956. Marion chaired the Jewish Community Relations Committee. Despite local resistance, the Brechners felt obligated to speak out against injustice. Many credit them for helping lower local unrest in the 1960s. Joe said, “Speak up Americans! Your silence is the greatest threat to our liberty.” The University of Florida posthumously awarded an honorary doctor of humane letters to Joe in 1990. Seated: Judge Richard Cooper; standing L-R: Marion Brechner, Harry Richard, Rev. Earl Scarbury, Rabbi Morris Feldman and Joseph Brechner Collection of the Historical Society of Central Florida, Inc.
Bea Ettinger, known as the “thinking women’s woman,” was an early advocate to advance programs benefitting women in all walks of life, c. 1968.
Governor Farris Bryant invited Ettinger to attend the 1963 Continuing Education for Women Conference, inspiring her lifelong commitment to assist women in achieving financial and social fulfillment. She directed Orlando’s Center for Continuing Education for Women (CCEW) and developed the Displaced Homemaker Program, a model for communities nationwide. She attended the 1977 National Women’s Conference and was instrumental in establishing the four-county regional Commission on the Status of Women and the Central Florida Educational Consortium for Women. A CCEW scholarship in Ettinger’s name is awarded today through the Central Florida Foundation to assist women in advancing through further education.
Roz Ettinger Fuchs
Suzan Abramson (second from right) and Susan McKenna (right) represent Orlando Planned Parenthood at the March for Women’s Lives on the National Mall in Washington, DC, April 2004.
Attended by more than half a million people, this was a demonstration to support reproductive rights and women’s rights. McKenna served on the Board of Planned Parenthood for ten years and has served on the Board of the Congregation of Reform Judaism, including as president. Other Jewish women active in the Orlando Planned Parenthood movement have included Susan Drukman, Nancy Wolf, Lynn Watch and Mara Levitt. McKenna’s daughter Alison Sokol (left) accompanied her mother to thehistoric March.
Susan McKenna
Rabbi Gary Perras (front right) and Dov Kentof of Temple Israel lead the Orlando community rally protesting United Nations Resolution 3379, equating Zionism with racism, November 1975. Scholar Robert Wistrich said, “Antisemitism is the longest hatred.” It found juridicial, and even institutional, expression when the UN passed a resolution declaring, “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” Jewish communities around the world protested, including Orlando. “This is outrageous! Not true! We must find a way to undermine the validity of this abusive attack on the legality and fairness of Zionism,” said Susan Bierman. US Ambassador Patrick Moynihan announced that “[The United States] does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.” After Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog illustrated how Arabs are fully integrated into Israeli society, he ripped the resolution in half, stating, “this resolution based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance, is devoid of any moral or legal value.” The UN revoked the Resolution in December 1991, on the US motion introduced personally by President George H. W. Bush.
Collections of the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU, originated by Marcia Jo Zerivitz, LHD, Founding Executive Director
The Ku Klux Klan staged a demonstration outside the Jewish Community Center in Maitland, 1995. On a Saturday, 23 members of the Black Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), wearing white hoods and robes, staged a demonstration outside the Jewish Community Center in Maitland. The KKK protesters carried signs with discriminatory anti-Jewish statements and carried Nazi, Confederate, US and Klan flags. The Federation urged community members to ignore the protest, but, encouraged by radio 104.1 talk show hosts Jim Phillips and Ed Tyll, 1,200 people gathered to protest the demonstration. The Orange County sheriff and Maitland police sent 85 officers and no one was injured.
Heritage Florida Jewish News
Members of the women’s tennis team at the Jewish Community Center protested playing Women’s Amateur Invitational Tennis League (WAIT) matches at a country club they believed discriminated in membership admissions, 1990.
The JCC Board of Directors adopted a 1989 policy that private clubs that “exclude persons from membership because of their race, religion, gender or ethnicity” were unacceptable. This gave the JCC women’s tennis team ladies an uncomfortable choice: play tennis matches at a country club they believed had discriminatory membership policies or face expulsion from the largest competitive tennis league in Orlando. League team captains engaged in a heated moral debate, then voted effectively to suspend the JCC team for failure to play and also voted down a League anti-discrimination policy. The JCC did not rejoin the League in future years.
Judith Yarmuth and Heritage Florida Jewish News
The New Day Chronicle, published by New Day Enterprises, was founded by Senator Geraldine Thompson, and focused on issues impacting Orlando’s African American community, 1990.
This issue was dedicated to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King and honored Florida civil rights trailblazers, including Bea Ettinger. Senator Thompson worked with Ettinger, and admired her instrumental role in developing Central Florida programs to help black women advance, secure better jobs and higher salaries. Thompson remembers, “[Many] people such as Bea Ettinger, Flossie Gluckman, Wolf Kahn, and other Jews collaborated with and supported African Americans in efforts to end discrimination and create equal opportunity.”
Roz Ettinger Fuchs
Jeffrey Miller (left), president of the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center, participates at city hall in the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, 2014.
The 1964 Act barred discrimination based on religion and national origin and segregation based on race, themes all too familiar to Jews. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Act, the Holocaust Center presented an exhibit about the struggle for civil rights in Orlando. As Miller noted in an Orlando Sentinel “My Word” column at the time, the anniversary had special meaning for Holocaust survivors.
L-R: Miller, Belinda Frazier, Latrice Leak and Michele Brennan, director of communications and neighborhood relations for the City of Orlando
Michele Brennan
Kaylyn Cooper (left) and Rebecca Stein (center) made history as the first female couple to receive a same-sex marriage license from Orange County, January 2015.
Florida voters approved a 2008 constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Declared unconstitutional in 2014, gay marriage was scheduled to become legal in Florida January 6, 2015. When questions arose whether all court clerks were required to issue licenses, Cooper and Stein filed suit. The Daytona Beach Appeals Court ordered all Orange County courts to issue marriage licenses on January 6. Mayor Buddy Dyer married the couple in a group “Vowed & Proud” civil ceremony outside city hall that same day. They later celebrated a Jewish marriage by Rabbi David Kay (right, in photo), under the chuppah.
Michele Brennan and Emilie Jones Haller, Photo International
Rabbi David Kay (right) officiated at the brit milah ceremony for baby Jack as grandmother Shirley Meltzer and fathers Shane and Matt Broffman (holding baby) join him in the hospital room, 2014.
Matt and Shane Broffman celebrated a religious commitment service in March 2011, before samesex marriage was legal in the US. In 2014, they married in Washington, DC, before Florida law permitted same-sex marriage. Later in 2014, they adopted a son and named him Jack, in memory of Jack Meltzer, Matt’s late grandfather.
Matt Broffman
L-R: Emma Kauffman and Jacob Stein donate their preschool classroom’s tzedekah money to The Roth Family Jewish Community Center of Greater Orlando (JCC) CEO Keith Dvorchik and #ThenNowAndAlways chair Jodi Krinker, who led a successful fundraising campaign following bomb threats at the JCC, March 9, 2017.
During the first quarter of 2017, more than 100 bomb threats targeted dozens of JCCs in 30 states. The Roth Family JCC in Maitland was financially impacted by three threats in quick succession, causing evacuations. In a tremendous show of support, the community united in a 24-hour online campaign, designed to demonstrate that the JCC is an essential part of the community ”then, now and always.” More than $428,000 was raised from 916 donors and several anonymous matching gifts, surpassing the $200,000 goal within the first two hours.
The Roth Family Jewish Community Center of Greater Orlando Archives