Travel Blog

My nieces were staying in Surfside last week so after the Marlins game I drove over to meet them for dinner. Overestimating the traffic, I arrived early and went in search of the apartment building where Isaac Bashevis Singer had lived.

On the Internet I was able to find only the street – 95^th – that had been named in his honor. I assumed the building was on it – but where? Probably the beach, but just to be sure, I turned left off of Collins, drove across Harding, and entered a neighborhood of single family houses. It didn’t seem the environs of a former New Yorker (and Varsovian). I asked a few people, but nobody had any idea. “We just moved here a few months ago,” one resident said. He added that someone at the shul should know.

I parked and walked into the Shul of Bal Harbour, which was wrapped in a pre-holiday quiet. The security guards couldn’t help me. A middle-aged woman appeared who seemed to have no knowledge of Singer. (She spoke with an accent that could have been Israeli.) Then a young man entered – in black suit, white shirt, black hat – and I asked him.

“Isaac Bashevis Singer,” he said, in the tone of someone stroking his beard. The man had a beard but he wasn’t stroking it. “He lived in New York.”

“But he moved here later in life,” I said. “He was the most famous resident of Surfside.”

“Well,” the man said intrigued, “let’s ask Mr. Googlemeyer.” And he reached into his pocket for his smartphone.

When I finished chuckling, I told him that I’d already gone to Mr. Googlemeyer, who had told me only about the street. This was news to the young man (the words "Isaac Bashevis Singer Boulevard" appear very small beneath the “95^th Street”), who said that he was visiting from New York. Brooklyn.

As he searched, he inquired about my interest. I said that I was a writer, and that I had lived in Warsaw. He proceeded to tell me, in capsule form, about the rich and tragic history of the Jews in Poland, going as far back as the 15th century. I told him of the resurgence of interest in Jewish culture among young Poles – the Jewish festival in Krakow gets bigger every year – but he countered with the rabbi who declared, a number of years ago, that Jewish life has no future in Poland. Sad if true, I told him.

“Here it is,” he said, looking down at his phone again in victory. “Surfside Towers at 9511 Collins.” I thanked him for the information, and also for the history lesson, and walked across the street to the second building past the intersection. There on the wall outside the entrance was something one almost never sees in South Florida: a plaque marking the home of a great writer.