Miami-Dade County’s Jewish mayor faces off against her own son over Israel bonds

Like many Jewish mothers, Daniella Levine Cava may be expecting tensions over Israel at the Rosh Hashanah table.

But for her, the personal truly is political: Levine Cava is the mayor of Miami-Dade County, and her son is vocally opposed to her office’s investments in Israel bonds.

Ted Cava, a local writer and former labor leader, showed up at a recent county meeting to urge his mother to divest from the county’s Israel bonds. Wearing a “Jews Say Divest From Genocide” T-shirthe and his 1-year-old daughter Leila stood with fellow members of Jewish Voice for Peace South Florida, the anti-Zionist group. The group says the county should shed what it believes is more than $151 million in Israel bonds.

“This is very uncomfortable for me. I love my mother a lot,” Cava, 36, told the Miami Herald at the event on Thursday. “We’re going to have Shabbat dinner tomorrow night. But she’s wrong on this.”

The spectacle was a potent illustration of how the ongoing war in Gaza, which began when Hamas attacked Israel from the enclave on Oct. 7, 2023, and is now approaching its grim second anniversary, has sharply split Jewish opinion — sometimes within the same family. Recent polling shows that overall approval of Israel’s war in Gaza among Americans is sharply split along generational lineswith 49% of those over 55.approving, and only 9% of respondents under 35 approving. Another poll specifically of American Jews, released last week, found that 53% disapprove of the war.

Likewise, the Cava family, Ted told the Herald, “is very divided on generational lines” when it comes to Israel.

Jewish Telegraphic Agency attempts to reach both mother and son Monday, shortly after a local news report thrust the family’s internal tensions into public view, were unsuccessful. A staffer at the mayor’s office directed requests for comment to another number which appeared to be disconnected. A local teachers union, where Ted Cava lists his employment on LinkedIn, said he was no longer working there.

Jewish Voice for Peace South Florida, which advertised Ted Cava’s participation on their Instagram, said they would pass along a request for comment.

The group’s various chapters have long been focused on protesting Israel bonds, and have trumpeted what they say are incremental successes in places like Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and Providence, Rhode Island.

Both parties in the Cava family strife acknowledged to the Herald that the war in Gaza has caused rifts between them.

“I know many, many people — including in my own family — who are extremely concerned about the situation, as am I, and exactly how we deal with it,” the mayor, 70, who is the first woman and the first Jew to hold the position, told the paper. She added, “There are differences, of course.”

Shortly after the war’s start, the second-term Democrat announced a boost in the county’s investment in Israel bonds to $76 million.

“Today, I am proud to make this additional investment in Israel bonds, as we send a clear message that Miami-Dade stands together with Israel and all nations that champion democracy,” she said in a statement at the time.

But in recent months she, too, has been critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. In a July statement amid reports of widespread famine in Gaza, the mayor denounced “the starvation and hunger innocent human beings face in Gaza today,” adding, “The eyes of the world are upon us. The U.S. has an obligation to lead because we have never forgotten that with power comes compassion and the strength to lead with moral courage.”

Still, she is not seeking to make a change in her county’s investment in Israel. “I’m not weighing in,” the mayor told the Herald about the bonds fight prior to the meeting Thursday of the County Commission, which was considering her latest budget request.

It’s unclear how much sway she could have on the county’s Israel bond investments. (According to JVP South Florida’s report, the $151 million includes both past and current investments.) Her office told the Herald that a recent change in Florida law puts local investments in the hands of the county clerk instead.

A county spokesperson recently told Axios the bonds are still a good fiscal investment despite unrest in the region and a downgrading of Israel’s credit score. That’s in line with what officials elsewhere who endorse investing in the bonds have said.

Still, two dozen activists from the JVP chapter from holding a press conference at the site of the meeting to protest what they say is “investing $151 million in genocide.”

“The County’s decision to invest $151 million in Israel Bonds has not been driven by a focus on improving quality of life for Miami-Dade County taxpayers but, rather, politically motivated by a desire to ‘stand with Israel,’” JVP South Florida wrote on its Instagram under a photo of Mayor Levine Cava attending an Israel Tech Week event.

Ted Cava did not speak at the Thursday protest. But speaking to media afterwards, he said, he understood that his presence would not go unnoticed.

“I decided to kind of take our family disagreement public,” he said, “knowing that some of her opponents could use it in bad faith against her.”