Essays on Ethnicity, Identity, and Diaspora Jewish Identities in a Changing World
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Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines? Essays on Ethnicity, Identity, and Diaspora Jewish Identities in a Changing World General Editors Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Yosef Gorny, and Judit Bokser Liwerant VOLUME 12 Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines? Essays on Ethnicity, Identity, and Diaspora By Raanan Rein LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rein, Raanan, 1960- Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines? : essays on ethnicity, identity, and diaspora / Raanan Rein. — 1st. ed. p. cm. — ( Jewish identities in a changing world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-17913-4 (hard cover : alk. paper) 1. Jews—Argentina—Identity. 2. Jews—Argentina—Attitudes. 3. Jews, Argentine—Israel—Attitudes. 4. Argentina— Ethnic relations. 5. Argentina—Politics and government—20th century. 6. Argentina—Politics and government—20th century—Press coverage—Israel. I. Title. II. Series. F3021.J5R38 2010 982’.004924—dc22 2009033578 ISSN 1570-7997 ISBN 978 90 04 17913 4 © Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands For my parents, Nehama and Shlomo, on their 60th wedding anniversary To the memory of Jacobo Kovadloff, both an Argentine Jew and a Jewish Argentine, whose trajectory has been a source of inspiration to many of us CONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgements ................................................ ix Chapter One Ethnicity and Diaspora in Twentieth-Century Latin America: The Jewish Case ............................................ 1 Chapter Two Searching for Home Abroad: Jews in Argentina and Argentines in Israel .......................................................... 21 Chapter Three Complementary Identities: Sephardim, Zionists, and Argentines in the Interwar Period .................... 47 Chapter Four Argentina, World War II, and the Entry of Nazi War Criminals ................................................................. 67 Chapter Five Nationalism, Education, and Identity: Argentine Jews and Catholic Religious Instruction ................ 89 Chapter Six Diplomats and Journalists: The Image of Peronism in the Hebrew Press ................................................ 103 Chapter Seven A Pact of Oblivion: The De-Peronization of the Jewish Community ............................................................ 133 Chapter Eight Argentine Jews and the Accusation of ‘Dual Loyalty’ ..................................................................................... 169 Chapter Nine Perón’s Return to Power as Refl ected in the Israeli Press .............................................................................. 195 Chapter Ten Soccer as a Double-Edged Weapon: Argentine Exiles in Israel Protest against the 1978 World Cup ............. 227 Bibliography ................................................................................. 253 Index ............................................................................................ 275 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A couple of years ago, I attended a Bar Mitzvah ceremony in a Reform community in Tel Aviv led by Israeli-Argentine actor Esteban Gottfried, the main character in a movie on Argentine immigrants in Israel that was screened on commercial television. While Gottfried spoke in Hebrew, with only a slight Spanish accent, most members of this community are Argentines, and the Torah scroll they use was donated to them by the Bet-El community of Buenos Aires. When the ceremony ended and most of the participants moved to the adjoining room for Kiddush, Gottfried and the pianist sang, now in Spanish, ‘El día que me quieras’ (The Day You Love Me), one of Carlos Gardel’s most famous tangos. A few years earlier, I happened to be in Buenos Aires during Pessach (the Passover holiday). I was invited to a seder meal at the home of Yume and Raquel, my wife’s cousins. Gathered around the table were Jews and non-Jews, Ashkenazim and Sephardim. The various platters that were placed before us offered a combination of delicacies from the East-European Jewish kitchen and typical Argentine dishes, foods that were kosher for Pessach side by side with non-kosher fare. Throughout the meal, in the background, the television set broadcast an important football match. From time to time, several of the guests, mostly (but not only) men, stole glances in the direction of the screen in order to at least keep up with the score. At one point someone asked how Atlanta, the football club from the Jewish neighborhood of Villa Crespo, was doing and whether the team had won its last game. Between the compote and the coffee, some of the family members tried to sing one of the holiday songs in broken Hebrew, at the same time that the sound of drums from the local branch of the Peronist party began to be heard, followed by the chant of Peronist hymns: Perón, Perón, qué grande sos/ mi general cuánto valés/ Perón, Perón, Gran Conductor/ sos el primer trabajador . (Perón, Perón, how great you are!/ My general, how we admire you!/ Perón, Perón, Great Leader / You’re worker number one!). These two anecdotes illustrate the central issues that appear, in one way or another, in all the essays included in this volume: namely, the mosaic of identities that characterize both Jews in Argentina and those Jewish Argentines who have “made aliyah” (relocated) to Israel. x preface and acknowledgments The Jewish community of Argentina has been a secular one for most of the modern period. The recent surge of religious Jewish move- ments in Latin America has produced, among other results, a dramatic change in the leadership of Argentina’s organized Jewish community.1 In mid-2008, for the fi rst time in its history, the members of AMIA, an organization representing the formal Jewish community of Argen- tina, elected an orthodox Jew as president. Soon after taking offi ce, the new president, Guillermo Borger, provoked a controversy in the local community. Born in Germany, Borger had arrived in Argentina at the age of three, together with his Holocaust-survivor parents. A day after his election as president of AMIA, Borger went to Israel for the wedding of one of his nieces, and took advantage of this visit to meet with Israeli religious leaders. While in Israel, he was interviewed by the most popular Argentine daily, Clarín, and declared that under his leadership, “we are going to strengthen AMIA’s role as the representa- tive of genuine Jews.”2 Asked what he meant by “a genuine Jew,” he answered: “It means that your life is entirely based on the dictates of the Torah, our sacred book.” In reply to a question concerning the Jewishness of the secular Jewish schools in Argentina, Borger declared, “it is a paradox that they should call themselves Jewish when they are not religiously observant.” Several days earlier, Rabbi Samuel Levin, a leading fi gure among Orthodox Jews in Argentina and reputedly a spiritual mentor of the new president of the AMIA, told another Buenos Aires daily, “you will see that even today, if we lived according to the Biblical system of 3000 years ago, everything would be fi ne, everything would work out.”3 1 On the surge of religious movements in Latin America’s three largest Jewish communities (Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico), among Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews alike, see for example, Marta F. Topel, Jerusalem and Sao Paulo: The New Jewish Orthodoxy in Focus (Lanham, Md., 2008); idem, “Brooklyn y Jerusalén en un país tropical: Cómo modifi có la ‘Jazará Beteshuvá’ la identidad de los judíos paulistas” (paper delivered at the international conference Latin American Jewry in a Changing Context: 1967–2007, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007); Shari Seider, “Looking Forward to the Past: The Ultra-Orthodox Community of Buenos Aires, Argentina” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1999); Shari Jacobson, “Modernity, Conservative Religious Movements and the Female Subject: Newly Ultraorthodox Sephardi Women in Buenos Aires,” American Anthropologist 108, no. 2 (2006): 336–346; Batia Siebzehner, “Changing Customs and Boundaries in Sephardic Jewry: The Expansion of the Shas Movement among the Syrian Communities of Latin America” (paper delivered at the international conference on Syrian Judaism and its Diaspora in the Americas, Mexico City, September 2008). 2 Clarín, 7 June 2008. 3 Crítica, 27 May 2008. preface and acknowledgments xi Needless to say, these remarks caused an uproar among many Jewish Argentines, who were incensed that someone might question the Jewish- ness of such prestigious schools as Tarbut or Ort of Buenos Aires. In a typical comment, a middle-aged Jewish Argentine said: I am Jewish, I want to be Jewish, I know that I am Jewish, and, most importantly, I am proud to be Jewish. But I am not religious. I am not a believer. Does it mean, then, according to what these gentlemen say, that I am not a genuine Jew? This person, who preferred to