Dispatch from Surfside’s only kosher market

Sandra Hirsch has worked at Kosherland in Surfside, Fla., for 16 years. By Louis Keene

By Louis Keene June 30, 2021

To get a sense of how Surfside’s Jewish community has grown in recent years, head to Kosherland, a humble three-aisle grocery located a few blocks from the collapsed Champlain South condominium, and try to buy milk.

Kosherland is the only kosher market in Surfside, and soon it will expand into the neighboring two storefronts. But on Wednesday morning, it was all out of milk — and Sandra Hirsch, who has been working the cash register here for 16 years, said it wouldn’t be getting a delivery until the afternoon.

The growth of the Jewish community in recent years has meant the store is often scrambling to keep up with demand. A 2014 Jewish population study of Greater Miami by Ira Sheskin counted about 14,000 people — including more than 5,000 Jews — in Surfside and the other small cities that make up the northern part of Miami Beach.

There are also about a dozen kosher restaurants in the vicinity.

Hirsch, who wears a necklace bearing her name in Hebrew, is a mayoral figure in this interwoven, diverse community with a small town feel. She wound up behind the register at Kosherland after she spotted a “Help Wanted” sign in the window. It’s a social job. She strikes up a conversation with nearly everyone who walks in the door, knows their stories, asks about their lives.

Hirsch knew many of the victims of the Champlain tower collapse, including Brad Cohen, a physician who is still among the missing. Tears streamed down her cheek at the thought of what they went through.

“It’s not only that they died, it’s how they died,” Hirsch said. “Like if they suffered, if they didn’t, if they died right away. You’re never gonna know.”

She didn’t have specific memories of the people she knew — they were mostly passing interactions, small talk about their spouses, their kids. Now, she said, the thought of those kids breaks her heart.

Much of the community — Jewish and non-Jewish — has a Latin flavor, with immigrants coming from, among other places, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Columbia, Venezuela and Mexico.

Hirsch, moved from her native Brazil to South Florida as an employee of the Intercontinental Hotels as a young adult, fell in love with the place — and her eventual husband — and has lived here ever since.

Louis Keene is a reporter for the Forward. His work has also been published in The New York Times, New York Magazine and VICE. He is based in Los Angeles and can be followed on Twitter @thislouis.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO