Sunday, August 30, 2015

Another Strand of Miami Beach Jewish Life

When Aaron Davidson was in Grade 11, he won first place in the Jewish Museum of Florida's "South of Fifth, Now & Then" competition for his short about Goldstein's Kosher Butcher Shop. This afternoon, he will be back at the Florida International University-affiliated institution in Miami Beach to sneak preview his latest film, What's My Line.

From that butcher shop flick, cleverly titled Tradition at Steak, Davidson went on to make shorts about the closing of a popular kosher deli (Rascal House) and a kosher bakery shop that has since closed (Abraham's Bakery).


His latest is about the practice of ritual outdoor enclosure and the use of Eruv, string that allows residents and visitors to bring objects outside their homes during Sabbath and Yom Kippur. From the museum event page:

This is the story of Miami Beach Eruv - a practically invisible, simple white string that circles above Miami Beach. This symbolic boundary means everything to some, but is unnoticed by most. Maintaining it is no easy task, especially in South Florida weather. Davidson offers a fascinating look behind the string and it's effect on life in Miami Beach.

Davidson, 25, lives in Miami Beach. He told Sergio Carmona, the Miami-Dade County reporter for The Jewish Journal, that Eruv - like so many elements of the Jewish faith - is a longstanding tradition:

"If you don't know Eruv is there, you don't even know it's there but yet for those that it's important to, it's a very important thing, so I like the symbolism of it and I just wanted to make something that I thought would be interesting to me and would be interesting to other people as well," Davidson said. "In doing research, I saw that the eruv dates back to Biblical times, but it's also a story on how Judaism deals with modern day life as well, so I thought it would be an interesting topic to do."

Davidson's Abraham's Bakery was also part of the JMOF-FIU exhibition "Growers, Grocers & Gefilte Fish — Florida Jews in the Food Industry."

[Aaron Davidson]

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