Florida

Like many foreigners, my husband, Oggi, was intrigued by the Florida Keys, a singular geography that has no European equivalent. Every year during the Florida family trip, I’ve promised him that we’ll drive all the way down to Key West. This year I finally delivered.

It looks much the same as the last time I visited — in the mid-’80s, with my dad at the wheel. My dad likes to talk about the old U.S. Route 1: how it was the Maine-to-Florida highway when he was growing up, before they built the Interstate. According to him, U.S. 1 hasn’t changed much.

A man in shorts and dark knee socks walks outside to take out the garbage and returns with yesterday’s newspaper, and morning begins again in Kings Point, a condominium community in Delray Beach, Fla., now the subject of a new film.

Jewish Democrats seeking congressional seats fared better in Tuesday’s election than Jewish Republicans.

In New York’s 1^st District in Suffolk County, incumbent Democrat Rep. Tim Bishop warded off a second challenge by Randy Altschuler, who would have been a second Jewish Republican in Congress. While their 2010 match was so close the results weren’t determined for weeks, Altschuler conceded just after midnight Wednesday, with the vote count at 52 percent to 48 percent, according to Newsday.

Lawyers for two Baltimore Jewish brothers accused of beating a black teenager requested that the trial be moved out of the city because of perceived similarities between the case and the death of Trayvon Martin.

Avi and Eliyahu Werdesheim are accused of beating a 15-year-old male in November 2010. Eliyahu Werdesheim, now 24, was a member of Shomrim, a Jewish neighborhood watch group, at the time of the incident.

“My mom encouraged me to join JDate,” says 33-year-old Leon Smulakowski, an amateur weight-lifter, who can break an apple in two with his bare hands. 

The last day of his subscription to the dating site – he was going to cancel – he saw Joanna's profile. “It was her beautiful smile that attracted me,” says Leon.  He messaged her.

Editor's Note: This is the second article in a two-part series. The first article, "Hebrew Charters as Growth Industry" appeared last week.

Miami — Last spring, when the financially struggling Greenfield Day School announced it was closing and the National Ben Gamla Charter School Foundation moved to obtain its building, what followed could have been an episode of “Extreme Makeover: School Edition.”

We all think we know Fort Lauderdale, a sunny winter escape as familiar to many of us as the Upper West Side.

Fort Lauderdale is the airport we fly into (Miami is strictly for international travel, and then only reluctantly). It’s the spring break of myth, the destination for Chinese food at Christmas with the grandparents. More recently, halted cranes and foreclosures have added an unsettling note to these palm-lined boulevards.

An investigation has been opened into anti-Semitic messages left at a new kosher restaurant in South Florida.

The FBI and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office are conducting an investigation into a series of hate messages left at the Mozart Cafe in Deerfield Beach since its opening more than four months ago, WSVN-TV reported.