Abstract
In 1956, a small number of young Argentine Sephardi men and women decided to ‘take over’ a building that belonged to Or Torah — the Congregation of Damascene origin in Barracas, a neighborhood in the south of Buenos Aires. One Saturday evening, they walked with enough supplies to last them a few days into a house used by older members to play dominos and cards. While one group remained in the building, a delegation walked around the neighborhood, including the coffee houses (the famous Bar de los Turcos among them) where many of the congregation’s leaders sat discussing the events of the week, and distributed printed flyers with the words: ‘We have taken over the club’. After spending the night in the building, and following a violent altercation with members of the communal leadership featuring flying chairs and the singing of the Hatikva (the Israeli national anthem), the youth group was granted permission to use the space for its own activities. ‘We introduced Israel, Israeli dance, culture, and much more [to the young members of Or Torah]’, said one of the rebels. ‘In fact’, another member recalls, ‘we succeeded — through the activities we devised — in bringing back to Judaism a large number of people who had stopped attending the synagogue services all together’.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
For a good summary of the discussion regarding the reconfiguration of Jewish diaspora, see R. Kobrin (2010) Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), pp. 10–11.
J. Boyarin and D. Boyarin (2002) Powers of Diaspora: Two Essays on the Relevance of Jewish Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
Anecdotal evidence suggests that this process was at play. Roniger and Babis suggest something similar in L. Roniger and D. Babis (2008) ‘Latin American Israelis: The Collective Identity of an Invisible Community’ in E. Ben-Rafael, J. B. Liwerant, Y. Gorny and R. Rein (eds) Identities in an Era of Globalization and Multiculturalism: Latin America in the Jewish World (Leiden: Brill), p. 300.
M. Berkowitz (1993) Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press);
T. Mayer (2000) ‘From Zero to Hero: Masculinity in Jewish Nationalism’ in T. Mayer (ed.) Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation (New York: Routledge).
H. Near (1992) The Kibbutz Movement: A History, 2 Vols (Oxford: Littman);
Y. Riemer (1996) ‘Interaction between Youth Movements and Kibbutz: The Case of Kfar Blum’, Journal of Israeli History 17 (2).
The list is growing. In particular, I’d like to mention F. Barbosa (2006) ‘Insurgent Youth: Culture and Memory in the Sandinista Student Movement’, PhD diss., Indiana University;
V. Langland (2004) ‘Speaking of Flowers: Student Movements and Collective Memory in Authoritarian Brazil’, PhD diss., Yale University;
V. Manzano (2009) ‘The Making of Youth in Argentina: Culture, Politics and Sexuality, 1956–1976’, PhD diss., Indiana University.
See Goren for a description of how the kibbutz and the pioneer became the central ideals of Zionism among American Jews. A. A. Goren (1999) The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), chapter 8. There were, however, other Sephardi youth groups which did not insist on aliyah and on the pioneer experience. They still considered themselves Zionist (as they raised money to send to Israel and believed in the right of the
The Third Seder was an event performed by Argentine (Askenazi) Zionist groups, like the Juventud Mordejai Anilevich. See D. B. Israel (1978) De América Latina a Israel, Al Kibutz: 32 Anos De Aliá Jalutziana De Los Miembros De La Família Del Hashomer Hatzair a Su Federación Kibutziana Del Kibutz Artzi (Israel: Israel Departamento Latinoamericano de la Organizatión Juvenil Sionista Mundial Hashomer Hatzair), p. 77.
The interest in folklore was evident not only in Argentina, of course. In Latin America, its study and dissemination was closely linked to the project of mesti-zaje and, consequently, to a reimagining of national identity. See O. Chamosa (2010) The Argentine Folklore Movement: Sugar Elites, Criollo Workers, and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism, 1900–1955 (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press).
See, for example, D. B. Israel (1978) De America Latina a Israel, Al Kibutz, pp. 67–9.
See F. Goldberg and I. Rozen (eds) (1998) Los Latinoamericanos En Israel: Antologia De Una Aliá (Buenos Aires: Contexto), p. 63.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Adriana M. Brodsky
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Brodsky, A.M. (2015). ‘Belonging to Many Homes’: Argentine Sephardi Youth in Buenos Aires and Israel, 1956–76. In: Jobs, R.I., Pomfret, D.M. (eds) Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century. The Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137469908_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137469908_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-69178-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-46990-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)