Imperialist Intruder or Fellow Jew? The Argentine-Jewish Reception of American Jews and Jewishness in the 1960s and 70s

This paper investigates the varied responses among Argentine Jews to American Jews and models of American Jewishness in the 1960s and 1970s. The points of intersection between these different parts of the diaspora were quite diverse: Beginning in the 1950s, American Jewish organizations created “Latin America” offices in Buenos Aires, using their clout to lobby the Argentine authorities to quell incidents of anti-Semitism; in the 1960s, American Rabbis set up shop in Buenos Aires and introduced liberal religious practice; throughout, the Argentine-Jewish press commented on the work of Jewish authors such Philip Roth and reported on the political activities of Jewish youth in the United States.

The response to these incarnations of American Jewishness varied. At times, the Argentine-Jewish community read the involvement of American-Jewish personalities and institutions in their affairs as an imperialistic intrusion. This led Argentine-Jews to sharpen their sense of themselves as distinct from their fellow diasporans, more definitively Argentine, and aligned with the broader project of Argentine national liberation. At other moments, diasporic commonality seemingly overrode geo-political tension as constructs of Jewishness emanating from the United States resonated forcefully enough to be absorbed (and adapted) in Argentina. In these scenarios and others, this paper will argue that interactions with the Jewish “other” ultimately created opportunities for Argentine Jews to re-imagine Jewishness, Zionism, the Argentine nation, and their membership in it.