Session Abstract

In the last few years, a new generation of scholars of the Jewish experience in Latin America has stressed, among other things, the need to move beyond studies that focus only on  ‘affiliated’ Jews, that overemphasize the importance of anti-Semitism, and that assume the Jewish experience to be exceptional when compared to that of other immigrant groups.  In addition, they strongly call for abandoning the notion that Jewish identity was stronger than, and sometimes incompatible with, national identifications.  Rather than viewing this minority as Latin American Jews, a proposition that highlights the centrality of the “Jewish” aspect of their realities, these scholars suggest a more apt characterization of these men and women as “Jewish Latin Americans.” 

            This panel is a response to that theoretical and methodological challenge.  In their presentations, the panelists focus on the Jewish and Latin American cultural, historical and political contexts as they seek to uncover the mechanisms by which a new generation of Jewish Latin Americans in Brazil and Argentina negotiated (sometimes more easily than others) their ethnic and national identities.  As such, the panel also addresses some of the issues that inform this upcoming year’s AHA Conference:  Communities and Networks.  The Jewish communities in question navigated diverse political, generational, and ethnic networks as they sought to build a new Jewish community (itself immersed in and in conversation with other –local and global- communities).  

            Beatrice Gurwitz from UC Berkeley considers how the tumult of post-Perón Argentina led many members of the Jewish community to rethink the nature of the Argentine nation and the place for Jews therein. As they did so, they grappled with what it meant for Argentina to be a “Latin American nation” and began to construct a Jewish ethnic identity befitting the regional context.  Adriana M. Brodsky, from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, examines the construction of two options for Sephardi Jews in Argentina:  one that was clearly in favor of migrating to Israel in order to participate in the ‘leftist’ project of nation building; and another one that understood being Argentines and supporting Israel from Argentina as perfectly compatible.  Michel Gherman, from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, focuses on Zionist schools and Zionist youth groups as a window into the processes of construction of a Jewish identity that could be understood as part of the Brazilian nation.