L'Chaim! by Seth H. Bramson

Author:Seth H. Bramson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.

She unquestionably ran one of the best—if not the best—big whorehouses in Miami and the South. Her business name was Madam Sherry, and she operated in Miami from 1929 until the mid-1950s. Her largest and most lavish establishment was the Moorish Palace at 5400 Northeast Fourth Avenue, which was closed by the army in 1943, although she continued in business in other locations. Madam Sherry, according to the arduous research done by architect Antolin Carbonell, RA, was born Rebecca Levitch in 1893 and was the daughter of Leah and Robert Levitch, who operated a secondhand store in St. Louis. Although she went through a supposed conversion to Christianity early in World War II, the fact is that she was born Jewish and used her sisters’ names—Anne, Rose and Ruth—as her aliases. State attorney Richard Gerstein, grandstanding as he was infamous for doing, pretended he was in Boston and attempted to ban her book, Pleasure Was My Business, from being sold in Miami and in Florida when it was first published in 1961. He proclaimed that it violated community morals, which was so ludicrous, nonsensical and totally false that in 1964 the U.S. Supreme Court, in Tralins v. Gerstein, threw out the ban and admonished Gerstein severely. Shown here, Pleasure Was My Business is a fascinating look at Miami’s—and Madam Sherry’s—history.

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