Árabes y judíos en Iberoamérica: similitudes, diferencias y tensiones (review)

In recent years several collections of articles and monographs discussing Arabs and Jews in Latin America, or treating them side by side, have appeared. The book under review represents a sophisticated addition to this literature. Jeffrey Lesser describes this approach in his theoretical introduction, in which he advises scholars to compare immigrant populations, rather than examine them in isolation, and to insert them into the national rather than the diasporic context. Studying Arab and Jewish Latin Americans together confounds established notions, revealing for example how aspects of each group that observers have considered unique in fact were shared.

Some authors focus on Jews and especially on the under-studied Sephardim. In particular, Raanan Rein and Mollie Lewis, Adriana Brodsky, and Susana Brauner challenge customary beliefs and demonstrate how these groups have reshaped Jewish and Argentine identities. Rein and Lewis show how in the 1920s and early 1930s, the periodical Israel brought together writers and readers of Eastern European and Mediterranean origin around Zionism. It also publicized the increasing social interactions between those two communities, thus undermining the Sephardic/Ashkenazi binary. Unlike most Argentine specialists, who concentrate on Buenos Aires, Brodsky describes Sephardic organizations in the interior between 1900 and 1950 and their links to the capital, a network that reinforced the idea of the nation. Syrian Jews have kept a low political profile in Argentina, but they have not necessarily been apolitical, Brauner notes. A few were Peronist functionaries, and a small number became leftists later in the 1960s and 1970s; by the latter decade Syrian Jews had engaged politically to protect their economic interests.

Other chapters concentrate on Arabss, exploring their national and transnational connections. Emmanuel Taub uncovers ample orientalism in the coverage of Arabs in the Argentine magazine Caras y Caretas from its founding in 1898 to 1918. The Lebanese assumed important commercial and political roles in Mexico, where their opposition to Israeli foreign policy at times affected their relations with local Jews, according to Carlos Martínez Assad. Denise Jardim traces Palestinian border crossings between two neighboring Uruguayan and Brazilian cities, and between this zone and their homeland. In her analysis of the Brazilian soap opera El Clon, Florinda Goldberg finds that despite its portrayal of Morocco as generally backward, the series showed a variety of Muslim beliefs and practices on such issues as women’s roles.

Finally, some articles examine Jews and non-Jews in detail, scrutinizing the relations, similarities, and differences between the two sets of communities. Leonardo Senkman notes that Ladino speakers and Moroccan Jews in Argentina tied themselves to European civilization by emphasizing their Spanish roots; Maronite Arabs did the same by highlighting their Christian identity. While over time Jews from Arab-majority countries “sephardized” and thus Europeanized themselves, the non-Jewish Syrian-Lebanese refurbished their Arab-Argentine identities. Maritza Corrales Capestany emphasizes the cordiality between Jews and Christian Arabs in Cuba and the lack of official anti-Semitism there, before and after 1959. Unlike many Brazilians and Argentines, Cubans constructed both groups as white. According to Beatriz Gurevich, local Jewish and Arab leaders cooperated after the 1994 bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita-Argentina, transcending the usual pattern of unofficial good relations. While the main Syrian-Lebanese sectors opposed Hezbollah’s actions in the Middle East, the Shiites, however, supported them.

Judith Bokser Liwerant summarizes the convergences, similarities, differences, and tensions for Mexico. As much of her discussion also applies to other countries, it offers a partial but much-needed conclusion. Both Ottoman Jews and non-Jews experienced immigration restrictions, although they were worse for Jews, and entered similar economic niches. Generally they got along well, sometimes even during Middle Eastern conflicts. For Jews, participation in Jewish organizations substituted for participation in the wider political arena, which has been tardy and limited. In contrast, the Lebanese, facilitated by their majority Christian faith, intermarried and assimilated and became prominent political actors. Today, however, some Lebanese are rediscovering their roots...