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 JEWS AND JEWISH
IDENTITIES IN
LATIN AMERICA
Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 Jewish Latin American Studies

Series Editor: Darrell B. Lockhart (University of Nevada, Reno)

Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 JEWS AND JEWISH
IDENTITIES IN
LATIN AMERICA
Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives

EDITED BY Margalit Bejarano,Yaron Harel,

Marta F. Topel, Margalit Yosifon
Coordinator
Ora Kobelkowsky (Dahan Center, Bar Ilan University)
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Boston
2017

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bejarano, Margalit, editor. | Merkaz le-tarbut, òhevrah òve-òhinukh be-moreshet
Yahadut Sefarad a. sh. Aharon òve-Raòhel Dahan
Title: Jews and Jewish identities in Latin America : historical, cultural, and literary
perspectives / edited by Margalit Bejarano, Yaron Harel, Marta F. Topel, Margalit
Yosifon; coordinator (Dahan Center, Bar Ilan University), Mrs. Ora Kobelkowsky.
Description: Boston: Academic Studies Press, [2017]
Series: Jewish latin american studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017034062 (print) | LCCN 2017034354 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781618116499 (e-book) | ISBN 9781618116482 (hardback: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Jews—Latin America—History—20th century—Congresses. | Jews—
Latin America—History—21st century—Congresses. | Jews—Latin America—
Identity—Congresses. | Latin America—Ethnic relations—Congresses.
Classification: LCC F1419.J4 (ebook) | LCC F1419.J4 J515 2017 (print) | DDC
980/.004924—dc23
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© Academic Studies Press, 2017

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On the cover: “Homenaje a la migración sefaradí en México,” by Arnold Belkin. 1979.

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Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 Table of Contents

Introduction: The Jewish Communities of Latin America viii

Margalit Bejarano, Yaron Harel,
and Marta F. Topel

PART ONE
Globalization, Transnationalism,
and Latin American Judaism and Jewishness 01
1 E
 xpansion and Interconnectedness of Jewish
Life in Times (and Spaces) of Transnationalism:
New Realities, New Analytical Perspectives 01
Judit Bokser Liwerant
2 C
 hanging Identities in a Transnational
Diaspora: Latin American Jews in Miami 35
Margalit Bejarano
3 Globalization, Education, and JewishCommunity
Life: Latin American Transnational Jewish
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Educators—Toward a New Paradigm? 52

Yossi J. Goldstein
4 Informal Jewish Education: Argentina’s
Hebraica Society 73
Silvia Schenkolewski-Kroll
5 The Effect of the Global Economic Crisis on the
Affordability of Jewish Lifestyle in Latin America 91
Eli Goldstein and Osnat Israeli

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 vi Table of Contents

PART TWO
The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: The Emergence
Of New Jewish Religious Identities, and The Creation
of Singular Interactions Between Jews and Non-Jews 101
6 J erusalem, the Diaspora, and the Jewish Home:
The Transfer of the Axis Mundi in Contemporary
Judaism—The Case of São Paulo 101
Marta F. Topel
7 B
 lacks, Jews, and the Paradoxes of the Struggle
against Racial Prejudice in Contemporary Brazil 123
Monica Grin
8 Th
 e Circulation of Jewish Agents and Jewish
Symbolic Goods inside the Universal Church
of the Kingdom of God 136
Carlos Andrade Rivas Gutierrez
9 I dentities, Migrations and Religious Practices:
The Jews and Argentineans of Syrian and
Moroccan Origin (from the Second Half of the
Nineteenth Century to the Early Twenty-First Century) 155
Susana Brauner
10 B
 razilian Virtual Orthodox Jewish Education in
the Twenty-First Century 173
Daniela Susana Segre Guertzenstein
PART THREE
Zionism—Multiple Dimensions: History,
Diplomacy, Politics, and Education 190
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

11 Th
 e Beginnings of Brazilian Zionism: Historical
Formation and Political Developments 190
Michel Gherman
12 Th
 e Creation of the Relations between Israel
and Brazil from a Pioneering Perspective:
Between Diplomacy and Kibbutz 208
Meir Chazan
13 Th
 e World Jewish Congress, the Jews of Argentina,
and the Military Junta, 1976–83 232
Itzhak Mualem

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 Table of Contents vii

14 Educational Excellence Program in

South America—Case Study 252
Margalit Yosifon
15 The Local Role of the Mordechai Anielewicz Movement
in Uruguay during and after the Six-Day War 295
Graciela Ben Dror and Victor Ben-Dror
PART FOUR
From Jewish Writers In Latin America To Latin
America In Israeli Contemporary Literature 326
16 But at Night, at Night, I Still Dream in
Spanish—The Map of Imagination of Israeli
Literature: South America 326
Yigal Schwartz
17 From Batiste Linen to the Empire at Palatnik
Villa—Centennial Records of Economic Life in
Natal’s First Jewish Community 348
Nancy Rozenchan
18 Between Nostalgia and Utopia: Stefan Zweig in Brazil 366
Luis S. Krausz
19 Representation of the Shoah in Brazilian Literature 376
Berta Waldman
20 Samuel Rawet and the Representation of the Holocaust 390
Saul Kirschbaum
Index 402
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 Introduction

THE JEWISH COMMUNITIES OF LATIN AMERICA

T he history of the Jews in Latin America is marked by contradictions. During

the colonial era, the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies prohibited any
Jewish presence, but the Jews were able to create modern Jewish communities in
the Dutch and British Caribbean. The Inquisition persecuted crypto-Jews, and
their descendants were assimilated into the Catholic societies. In recent years,
however, we have witnessed the proliferation of groups that consider themselves
Bnei anusim (descendants of marranos), around Recife—which was part of the
Dutch colony in Brazil, as well as in Peru, Mexico and Colombia.
The first Jewish immigrants to reach the Latin American republics after
independence settled in the Caribbean port cities of Venezuela, Colombia,
and Panama. They prospered economically, but tended to intermarry and
­assimilate. Their traces, however, did not disappear, and, in some cases, they
laid the foundations for the future organization of their respective ­communities.
The forerunners of the Sephardic communities in Brazil were Moroccan
Jews from Tétouan and Tangier, who immigrated during the nineteenth
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

­century, and penetrated into the Amazon region as a result of the rubber boom.
The decline of the rubber industry brought many of them to Rio de Janeiro and
São Paulo. In recent years, groups of Amazonians of Moroccan descent have
reclaimed their Jewish identity.
During the period of mass migration, the countries of the Southern
Cone—Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile—tried to attract European
immigrants, especially agricultural workers. Argentina thus became the focus of
an organized attempt to solve the problem of Russian Jewry through a m ­ assive
agricultural project sponsored by Baron Maurice Hirsch. The agricultural
colonies became a hotbed nurturing the leadership of Jewish Argentina, and
provided the narrative of the local roots of the “Jewish Gauchos,” but, from a
practical point of view, Jewish agriculture disappeared within two generations.

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 Introduction ix

Nevertheless, the Jewish agricultural settlements, which today house a very

small number of Jews, did not escape from a new form of c­ ontemporary Jewish
identity. Thus, in recent decades, the colonies created by Baron Hirsch have
been transformed into memory landmarks of the Argentine Jewish ­community.
We may claim, then, that they operate as the foundational myth of the Argentine
Jewish community, competing with other myths of origin and “mother lands,”
such as Eretz Israel or the communities in Europe and the Middle East, from
which the first immigrants to Argentina arrived. Jewish schools organize
visits to these colonies and small villages, and there are o­ rganized tours for
­members of the Jewish communities and the general Argentine public. These
­demonstrate the ability of the largest Jewish community of Latin America to
recreate its Judaism, incorporating its Jewish past into the history of Argentina
as well as to its Jewish present through creative strategies.
With the decline of the Ottoman Empire, Sephardic Jews began to i­mmigrate
to Latin America in large numbers. Jews from Syria, Turkey, and the Balkan
­countries dispersed throughout the continent since the beginning of the twentieth
century, establishing communal infrastructures based on sub-ethnic affiliation.
During the 1920s, large numbers of Jews from Poland and other East
European countries immigrated to Latin America. From a historical ­perspective,
the United States quota acts led to Latin America becoming a destination for
Jewish mass migration. The closing of the gates of America resulted in the growth
of the Jewish communities in the Southern Cone, as well as in Mexico and Cuba.
During the Holocaust, the countries of Latin America became potential havens
for Jewish refugees from countries under Nazi rule, creating a c­ontradiction
between law and practice: while all the countries implemented a restrictive
­legislation that legally closed their gates, they did not necessarily deny unofficial
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

procedures for rescue. In fact, there is no correlation between the capacity for
absorption and the number of refugees who entered each country.1
Jewish institutional life was established on a voluntary basis, and was
­influenced by the model of the communities of origin as well as by the ­different
circumstances in the new countries. Larger communities were able to create
more elaborate infrastructures, but the patterns of organization were s­ imilar.
The Ashkenazi Jews created religious institutions, even though most of them

1 Haim Avni, “The Spanish Speaking World and the Jews, the Last Half Century,” in Terms of
Survival: The Jewish World since 1945, ed. Robert S. Wistrich (Abingdon, UK: Routledge,
1995), 358–82; “Latin America and the Jewish Refugees: Two Encounters, 1945 and
1938,” in The Jewish Presence in Latin America, ed. Judith Laikin Elkin and Gilbert W. Merkx
(Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987), 58–68.

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 x Introduction

were secular. They developed educational networks, as well as social and

­cultural institutions that reflected the political conflicts between Zionists,
Bundists, and Communists. The Landsmanschaftn (institutions for persons
coming from the same town) characterized the first generation, and were
­substituted gradually by a general Ashkenazi identity, unlike the Sephardic
Jews, who tended to preserve sub-ethnic divisions. The Sephardic institutions
are based on centralized communities that maintain divisions between Ladino
speakers, Aleppans (Halebis), Damascenes (Shamis), and Moroccans.
The Judaism of the immigrants, which differed significantly from the
Judaism recreated by the first and second generations born in Latin America,
reveals rich and complex phenomena in the social, political, ­religious, and
­cultural development of the Jewish communities from different c­ountries.
Social, cultural, and political transitions challenged the institutional
­infrastructures created by the immigrant generation. Processes of integration
and assimilation were influenced by the ethnic composition and attitudes
toward religious diversity and multiculturalism that require specific analysis
for each individual country. Intergenerational conflicts, mixed marriages, and
the growing identification with the non-Jewish environment alienated large
­segments of the Jewish population from the organized communities, especially
in countries with large European populations and with an ideological openness
toward pluralism—Brazil being a paradigmatic case. In countries with large
indigenous populations, such as Mexico and Peru, where immigrants and their
descendants were small minorities, the Jews tended to be auto-segregated in
their own communities, and, to this day, are more involved in communal life.
For many years, the Jews of Latin America—particularly the Ashkenazi
Jews—tended to be secular. From the 1940s on, Jewish identity was c­ onstructed
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

around two axes: Zionism and the Holocaust. In the words of historian Judith
Laikin Elkin, the Jews of Latin America were “a secular minority attached to
Zionism as a substitute for its ancestral religion.”2 This situation has changed
totally in the last fifty years. The Conservative movement became a focus of
religious attraction that spread from Argentina throughout the continent,
­converting the Seminario Rabínico de Buenos Aires into an exporter of rabbis
to all the Spanish-speaking communities, including those in the United States,
as well as to Brazil. More recently, global ultra-Orthodox movements are
­gaining strength among the Jewish communities, under the impact of ­shlichim

2 Judith Laikin Elkin, The Jews of the Latin America 3rd Edition (Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner Publishers, 2014), 293.

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 Introduction xi

of Chabad Lubavitch or Latin American graduates of yeshivot in Israel and

the United States. While large segments of the Jewish population are totally
­integrated into the Latin American environment, with a high percentage of
intermarriage, the presence of ultra-Orthodox Jews, Ashkenazi and Sephardic,
has been very visible in the public sphere from the 1980s on.
The growing role of religion in Jewish life has diminished the i­ mportance
of Zionism as a manifestation of Jewish life—a phenomenon known as
­de-Zionization. Following its establishment, the State of Israel contributed
to legitimizing local identities, and provided a respected madre patria for the
­rootless Jews. Gradually, however, Israel was transformed from a source of
self-confidence to a source of danger, as manifested in the 1990s’ bombings of
the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina—
the Ashkenazi Jewish Community) in Buenos Aires, or in the anti-Semitic
treatment of the Jewish community by the Chávez administration in Venezuela.
Political and economic crises in Latin American countries motivated waves
of emigration that resulted in the emergence of transnational Jewish Latin
American communities in Israel, the United States, and Europe. New problems
now confronted the descendants of the immigrants who had found a haven from
persecutions and poverty in Latin America. During the period of the ­military
­dictatorships, a relatively large number of Jews, particularly in Argentina, but also
in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, were involved in underground activities. While
many became Desaparecidos, others were able to escape to exile. At the same time
that the countries of the Southern Cone experienced a return to ­democracy, other
countries—such as Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela—faced political v­ iolence
that threatened personal security, which became a major cause for e­ migration.
In addition, the impoverishment of the middle classes under ­ neo-liberal
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

­governments shattered the economic situation of the Jewish ­communities, lead-

ing to the departure of many Latin American Jews from Latin America.

***
Many of the early studies on Latin American Jewry were monographs prepared by
local researchers, some academic, but many conducted by community a­ ctivists,
who wrote testimonies, memoirs, and histories of their own immigration and
regions—works that came to light through books, magazines, and the community
presses, and, in many cases, which were characterized by their apologetic tone.
One of the early initiatives to professionalize Jewish studies was the creation
of the Program for Jewish Studies at the University of São Paulo in the late 1960s.

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 xii Introduction

During the same period, the Institute of Contemporary Jewry of the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem introduced the study of Latin American Jewry with the
pioneering studies of Haim Avni. The starting point for Avni’s approach was the
need to understand the current existential problems of the Jews in Latin America
through a combined analysis of the economic, social, and political reality in their
respective countries, and the Jewish context at both the local and global levels.
Avni’s students were among the founders of Agudat Mitmachei Iahadut
Latinoamerica (AMILAT), an Israeli association of researchers of Latin
American Jewry that organizes the Latin American section in the World
Congresses of Jewish Studies, which take place every four years in Jerusalem.
It also publishes the volumes of Judaica Latinoamericana, thus contributing to
the inclusion of Latin America in the framework of Jewish studies.
While many of the early studies focused on one country, particularly
Argentina, Judith Laikin Elkin was the first to present Latin American Jewry
as a complex, pointing out the comparative perspective. Her book, The Jews in
the Latin American Republics (1980), became the basic textbook for the study
of Latin American Jewry in the United States. In 1980, she founded LAJSA—
the Latin American Jewish Studies Association, which became an international
forum for scholars interested in the field, with biannual conferences.
Latin American Jewish studies expanded gradually, with a growing
crop of research, not only in history but also in literature, political science,
sociology, anthropology, and art. Many of the researchers, particularly
those based in the United States, became interested in the Jewish case from
the perspective of general Latin American studies. A revisionist approach
emerged, criticizing the “Zionist approach” of Haim Avni and his disciples.
Its main representatives are Raanan Rein and Jeffrey Lesser, who argue that
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

most of the old studies focus on the organized communities and ignore the
nonaffiliated. They emphasize the local identity, using the term “Argentine
Jews” instead of Jewish Argentineans, and stress the similarities between
Jews and other minorities.3
This revisionist approach was challenged in Avni, Bokser Liwerant,
DellaPergola, Bejarano and Senkman, Pertenencia y alteridad. Judíos en/de
América Latina: Cuarenta años de cambios (Belonging and Otherness: Jews in/
from Latin America: Forty Years of Change) (2010), which makes a ­comparative

3 Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein, eds., Rethinking Jewish-Latin Americans (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 2008); Ranaan Rein, Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines
(Leiden: Brill, 2010).

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 Introduction xiii

analysis of both the history and the historiography of Latin American Jews
between 1967 and 2008.

***
The collection of articles in this volume is based on an international c­ onference
that took place in São Paulo in September 2012. The conference was organized
in Israel by the Dahan Center of the Bar-Ilan University and the Academic
College in Ashkelon, and, in Brazil, by The Program for Hebrew Language,
Jewish Literature, and Culture, and the Center for Jewish Studies of the
University of São Paulo. Half of the articles in the volume deal with Brazil,
reflecting the growing importance of studies on Brazil in Latin American Jewish
studies, thus contributing to a more proportionate balance between studies on
Argentina, as the largest Jewish community, and Brazil, as the second.
In this collection, the reader will find a wide range of subjects ­reflecting
all the historiographical approaches mentioned above, as well as various
­scholarly perspectives, such as social history, anthropology, sociology, and
­literary ­criticism. There are studies using comparison versus monographs;
studies based on the inside perspective of the individual communities
versus analyses of the Jewish case in the general context; papers focused on
the Jewish ­communities versus those focused on the relationship between
these groups—or the diasporas—and the State of Israel. The common
denominator of all the works included in the present volume is the aim
to understand the singularity of contemporary Judaism and Jewishness in
Latin America.
Some of the articles reflect the way in which scholars of Jewish studies
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

in Israel are exposed to subjects such as the emergence of the new ortho-
doxy, Jewish education in the Diaspora, aliyah, and kibbutzim, or to Latin
American literature from an Israeli point of view. Indeed, both lay Israelis
and the Israeli academic community continue to regard Latin America as
an “exotic” and d­ istant space studied almost exclusively by researchers
from various academic institutes dedicated to Latin American studies or to
Latin American Jewish studies. In their efforts to overcome this tendency,
the contribution of Israeli authors to this volume is an important step in
demystifying stereotypes that were consolidated in Israeli society over
several decades. At the same time, they raise awareness of the importance
of Latin America in the global context, and the relevance of the different
Jewish communities and their special r­ elations to the State of Israel.

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 xiv Introduction

We would like to extend our thanks and appreciation to Dr. Shimon

Ohayon of the Dahan Center, for his support and encouragement over the
years. Our thanks also go to Dr. Gabriel Steinberg, head of the Center for
Jewish Studies of the University of São Paulo, for giving us the backing needed
for the successful accomplishment of the conference; to our students, Amilkar
Henrique Gonçalves de Moura and André Galvão Soares, who worked with
enthusiasm and efficiency on the last-minute details; and, finally, to Robert
Bánvölgyi, who did the simultaneous translation of conferences presented
in Hebrew into Portuguese. Above all, we would like to thank Mrs. Ora
Kobelkowsky, who, on an almost daily basis over more than three years, ably
and painstakingly oversaw the editing of the articles. She was the connecting
link between the contributors to this volume and us, and did it so graciously.
We hope that the contents of this volume will be of interest to both
­scholars and laypersons who care about Jewish life in Latin America.

Margalit Bejarano, Israel

Yaron Harel, Israel
Marta F. Topel, São Paulo
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 Part One
Globalization,
Transnationalism, and
Latin American Judaism and
Jewishness

CHAPTER 1

Expansion and
Interconnectedness of Jewish
Life in Times (and Spaces)
of Transnationalism:
New Realities, New Analytical
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Perspectives
JUDIT BOKSER LIWERANT

L atin American Jews live, move, build, and interact in a global world.
Resulting from increasing interconnectedness and sustained migra-
tion flows, new processes of redefinition and reshaping of Latin American
Jewish experiences and identities are taking place in both the known and the

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 2 Part One Globalization, Transnationalism

new ­geographical and social territories. Organizational and ideational pat-

terns develop through a process of reaffirmation, transferral, or re-transferral
between home and new settings. Thus, novel realities emerge that require a
broad analytical scope that relates to and differentiates between Diaspora and
transnationalism both as social processes and conceptual tools.
Singular to Jewish life has been the worldwide dynamics of interaction
and closeness. The diasporized patterning across time and space has encom-
passed dense institutional networks situated within localities, across them, and
as part of a Jewish world system. Through a historic process of being attached
to different shifting and overlapping external centers–homelands, real and con-
crete, imaginary and symbolic, Latin American Jews have experienced crossing
borders. A path simultaneously evincing strong connections of transnational
solidarity, as well as a dependent or peripheral character of communities in the
process of becoming an ethno-national Diaspora, affected these relationships.
Political concepts, values, aspirations, and organizational entities brought from
diverse parts of the world played fundamental roles in the process of cultural
and institutional formation of Jewish communities in Latin America.
Latin American Jewish realities point to convergences and divergences
between identities within a singular common trait: a close interaction between
ethno-cultural identity and the national dimension in the mold of diasporic
Jewish nationalism under progressive Zionist hegemony. The permanent
struggle between world visions, convictions, strategies, and instrumental
needs fostered the Zionist idea and the need for the State of Israel to become a
central axis around which identity was built and communal life structured and
developed. Thus, the State of Israel and the Jewish/Zionist ethos have played a
unique role as hegemony builders and catalysts.
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

However, today’s processes of globalization, the growing scope and

intensity of worldwide interaction, and the emigration waves from the continent
point to new models of transnational ties, and the emergence of transnational
social fields and spaces. We suggest that Diaspora and Transnationalism
may be seen as key concepts for approaching the Latin American Jewish
contemporary condition. The borders of Latin American and Jewish life have
expanded beyond the region, and acquired great significance as factors of social
transformation. Processes of migration and relocation to new geographical and
social territories reshape experiences and identities (see Figure 1.1).
Transnationalism becomes a stable condition that goes beyond the subjects
that move and create expanded social spaces and realities. It therefore challenges
the “methodological nationalism” of prevailing social theories that equate society

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 Expansion and Interconnectedness Chapter 1 3

Figure 1.1 Latin American Jewish Trends.

with the boundaries of a particular nation-state. Social processes, cultural inter-

actions, and identity building operate across borders.1 From this perspective, we
observe traits and trends of the Latin American Jewish ethno-national Diaspora
becoming an ethno-transnational one, in which bordered and bounded social
and communal units are transnationally constituted spaces interacting with one
another while creating new extended spaces (see Figure 1.2).2
While singular in certain respects, the Jewish case exhibits traits that may
help us to redefine the character and significance of transnational ethnicities
in a broader sense. It enables us to grapple with issues that have developed in
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

scholarly discourse and to fill in some gaps. Comparatively, Jews are understudied
in contemporary Diaspora research, where they seem to have lost their historical
resonance.3 This article affords an opportunity to redress that imbalance.
Similarly, there is a relative dearth of discourse about communal institutional
underpinnings in the available literature on transnational social relations.

1 Cf. Ulrich Beck, “La condition cosmopolite et le piège du nationalisme méthodologique,”

in Les Sciences Sociales en Mutation, ed. Michel Wieviorka (Auxerre, FR: Cedex, 2007);
Nina Glick Schiller et al., “From Immigrant to Transmigrant: Theorizing Transnational
Migration,” Anthropological Quarterly 68, no. 1 (1995).
2 Judit Bokser Liwerant, “Latin American Jews. A Transnational Diaspora” in Transnationalism,
ed. Eliezer Ben-Rafael et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
3 Roger Brubaker, “The ‘Diaspora’ Diaspora,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 28, no. 1 (2005).

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
 4 Part One Globalization, Transnationalism

Figure 1.2 Conceptual Renewal of Territory and Community (Material +

Symbolic): Transnationalism.

TRANSNATIONALISM AND GLOBAL

DIASPORAS: THE CONCEPTUAL AXES
Both concepts refer to similar processes and actors, and sometimes are used
interchangeably, reflecting different intellectual genealogies; that is, different
ways in which theoretical traditions deal with the place of structures and
Copyright © 2017. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

agency in a world on the move: population movements, migratory processes,

and classical or historical dispersions, as well as a new Diaspora.
The changing contours of diasporas and their profusion have led to
new formulations that recover and redefine classical dimensions. Indeed,
while older notions of Diaspora mainly concern enforced dispersal, today
this concept covers diverse groups like migrants, expatriates, refugees and
displaced peoples, temporary migrant workers, groups of exiles, or ethnic
communities, thus leading to extreme responses such as the questioning of
its heuristic value.4

4 Rainer Bauböck and Thomas Faist, eds., Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories
and Methods (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press—IMISCOE Research, 2010);

Jews and Jewish Identities in Latin America : Historical, Cultural, and Literary Perspectives, edited by Yaron Harel, et al., Academic
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