Norma and Michael Orovitz
Norma and Michael Orovitz Presented by The Foundation of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation
While we were born and reared in polar opposite cultures and cities… north and south…and like to say ours is a “mixed marriage,” we came to our partnership with identical core beliefs. Despite differences in ritual practices of a classically raised Miami Reform Jew and a more traditionally nurtured “Conservadox” New Yorker, we each grew up in families
anchored to synagogues. So, it was natural that Temple Israel of Greater Miami, an Orovitz family tradition since nearly a century ago, would be central to the joint community life we would build together in South Florida. Primarily, each of our parents worked at ensuring civil rights for oppressed and persecuted Jews here and in Europe and Palestine, worked at ensuring support and health services for the disabled and worked at providing an educational and career path for returning GIs and Jewish physicians following Norma and Michael Orovitz
WW II. Notably and locally, Michael’s father, Max Orovitz, is credited with founding Mount Sinai Hospital, the Community Chest which predated the United Way, the Citizens Board at UM, among so many other preeminent organizations. He, too, was key to nurturing the nascent tourism/hotel industry in Israel with Miami partners drafted to support what became the Dan Hotel group. Mount Sinai Medical Center, the University of Miami, and the Greater Miami Jewish Federation are legacy interests that we have adopted and continue to sustain with sweat equity and financial support. That group has grown to include Miami Jewish Health, The Jewish Museum of Florida/FIU, Save Dade, Faith-in-the-City and the former American Jewish Congress, but Temple Israel has been the centerpiece of our stewardship. As a retired senior executive with City National Bank of Florida (Michael), and a former journalist with the late Miami News and Jewish Floridian and, later, longtime development director at the Miami Jewish Home (Norma), we took our professional crafts, skills and reputations and merged them with our philanthropic and volunteer community interests. Each of us has served as president of Temple Israel, as well as at multiple other institutions throughout the region. Just as the mandate to serve was inherited from our parents, we hope to provide role modeling for our children, now adults, and their children. Our home was punctuated always with a sense of community and awareness of our joyful obligations, buoyed by ability and desire. That macro vision of tikkun olam on a grand scale is mirrored in a micro version as we support and care for an aging parent as she nears her own centennial.
We’ve often considered that it is so easy to be Jewish in Miami, as the plethora of organizations allows affiliations in so very many cultural, educational and philanthropic areas. But, to our mind, no affiliation is more pivotal to our identity than belonging to and supporting a synagogue. And, for us, that has always been Temple Israel of Greater Miami, South Florida’s pioneer Reform synagogue.
Temple Beth Am AND Rambam Day School
Presented by The Foundation of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation
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