Ronelle Delmont

 Ronelle is an Adjunct Lecturer at FIU in North Miami where she has lectured on books, films, history and other cultural topics, for over two decades. A wide variety of interests have made her one of South Florida’s most popular speakers for 27 years. Her stimulating book and lecture topics are meant to provoke thought and be entertaining at the same time. 

Ronelle was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (E 3rd between B&C) in 1944 to Herman and Fay Marie (Bistreich) Bienstock. At age 4 she began attending PS 15 on E 4th St and, at the same time, the landmark Downtown Talmud Torah on E Houston. Herman, a metal dealer, moved the family to Brownsville, Brooklyn in 1952, when the corner parking lot doubled his monthly fee to $2.00. Ronelle graduated from George Gershwin Jr High and Thomas Jefferson H. S. with an award in Music alongside the enormously talented, Linda November. Ronelle had been the Concertmistress of Jefferson's orchestra (1st violinist in photo above) and received a scholarship to study Musicology at Hunter College but dropped out later to open an Antiques Shop in Greenwich Village with her first husband, David Migden. Old Horizons Antiques was located at 195 Bleecker St.  (opposite Café Figaro) and later, at 276 Bleecker (next to John's Pizza). The shop was popular among writers, artists, activists, and rock stars of the 60s Hippie Era.

 Some of Ronelle’s friends and customers were professional Mid-Eastern Dancers and Musicians who performed in local cabarets and ethnic nightclubs around the city. She took lessons from them (Serena, Ibrahim Farrah, Anahid Sofian) and, as Rahelah, began performing in those nightclubs and teaching her own students at various  dance studios in the Village, including the New School for Social Research. 

 

 By the early 80s, she was co - owner of a nationwide entertainment agency (Special Delivery Entertainment) with Parisian-born, singer and talent agent, Daniel Delmont. Daniel, at that time, was half of the International Singing Duo, Daniel and Dimitri.  After moving to Florida in 1988, the duo split and Daniel launched a solo singing career. Ronelle soon found herself with an unexpected career in Public Speaking. Due to her  lifelong interest in languages and a love of flying, Ronelle became a Pan Am Reservation Agent at Miami Airport only a few years before the airline dissolved. She then received a grant to continue her college studies, this time choosing Journalism and International Relations. In 1994, while at Broward Community College, she received a Journalism Award for her coverage of the Ku Klux Klan and the Haitian Refugee Crisis. In 1996, she received a B.A. from the Dept. of International Relations at Florida International University. 

 

She has been creating Life-Long Learning Lectures & Programs for the residents of Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties ever since. 

 

Until his recent death in Plantation, Ronelle was an associate of James "the Amazing" Randi. For almost two decades she attended seminars and weekly meetings conducted by the famous Skeptic and Magician as he debunked various claims of psychic phenomena. Her association with him had a major impact on her education. She was especially influenced by scientists with whom James Randi was associated – Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Dawkins and many others.  

 

She has studied many languages, always because of a need she felt, to communicate with the people around her – Spanish, Italian, French, German, Greek, Yiddish, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and due to her early interest in Chinese cooking – even Chinese. She was a private student of  Grace Zia Chu. However, Ronelle's wok eventually became idle after she began publishing her controversial,  Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax Website which has been challenging the historical outcome of that case since 1998. Absorbed in completing her book about the Lindbergh Kidnapping, she has not done much Chinese cooking. 

 

The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax book will finally be published, hopefully, by January 2025.

A memoir, "The World of Shmata Hari" will follow.