The Translation and Publishing of Books in the Construction of Transnational Jewish Geography: The Case of the Jewish Argentinean Publishing House “Israel,” 1938–69

This paper explores the case of the Jewish Argentinean publishing house “Israel” (1938-1969) as one of the era’s most important Spanish-language Jewish cultural mediation projects. The transnational networks that connected the Jewish people were the result of the action of agents who worked through a diverse variety of political, cultural, economic and philanthropic projects.  In this sense, the study of Jewish publishing houses in Argentina allows us to illuminate certain aspects of the construction and dynamics of these transnational networks. Through the publishing in Spanish of the works of different authors originally in the various languages of the Jewish Diaspora, “Editorial Israel” emerged as one of the main circulation channels of ideas that connected the Argentinean and Latinamerican Jewish audience with the larger American, European and Israeli Jewish cultural production. However, this connection is neither direct nor transparent.  Any process of translation and editing is initially a process of selection, and each publishing house where these processes take place is conditioned by the figure of its editor.  Therefore, to broaden the understanding of the type of cultural proposal made by “Israel,” this paper pays particular attention to the role and the intellectual and political trajectories of its head editors, Maximum Yagupsky and Jose Mirelman.