The Journey of a Thousand Dollars (Begins with One Box Step)

The seeds of many of the philanthropies that benefit Cuban and Portoriquen communities today were planted in Miami Beach in the 1940s. Jewish charitable organizations had been busy assisting arriving immigrants from European ghettos at the beginning of the twentieth century. They later became involved in the labor movement where many Italians worked for slave wages. After WWII, attention was turned to the blacks of the South. Today, Latino families are being favored with parks, playgrounds, pools and programs sponsored by the many Jewish philanthropies.

In 1940, vacationers from Bensonhurst and Flatbush found paradise in the sun of South Beach, where they were exposed to the delightful music of nearby Havana. Soon entranced by the rhythm of the rumba, they helped give rise to the clubs along the beach such as the Five O’Clock Club, the Carrousel and the Patio at the Roney Plaza, that featured Latin spectacles and free conga lessons. New hotels going up along Collins Avenue had to include, usually off the lobby, a dance studio that added the essential tumult. There being few professional dance teachers, those wanting to perfect their box step appealed to the nightclub performers for instruction. The five or six teachers that were taking pupils were soon overwhelmed by the dance mania that had developed seemingly overnight. Former wallflowers were seen doing tornillos by the pool with their slick-haired Latinos.

The similarity between Jewish and Latino cultures, both being family oriented, made for bonding so that the unison persisted even up into the Catskills in New York during the summer months. New clubs sprang up in New York City following the venerable Havana Madrid, named La Conga, Versailles, Yumuri and Fe Fe’s Monte Carlo, offering Saturday and Sunday rumba matinees. In such close proximity to the Garment Center, it was natural to find “our crowd”: the furriers, clothiers, milliners, cloak and suit boys with their models.

While I will always credit fully the magic of the music, I sometimes feel that my old dance studio in the lobby of the National Hotel on the beach contributed the first step that helped bring today’s descendents of my original pupils, the original rumbaniks, to center stage in the Latino-oriented Jewish philanthropies.