Kugel and Frijoles: Latino Jews in the United States by Laura Limonic (review)

Recent scholarship on immigration stresses the various, often contradictory, ways in which processes of social integration, acculturation, linguistic barriers and economic challenges shape individual and collective identities. The history of Jewish immigration to the Americas is well documented, beginning with sporadic and unorganized settlements of individual Jews in colonial Latin America following the Spanish Inquisition. During the modern era, Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and Sephardic Jews from the declining Ottoman Empire arrived in growing waves of immigration due to socioeconomic and political unrest, as well as antisemitic persecutions in the Old World. Jewish immigrants were drawn to the United States by the principle of religious freedom inscribed in the US Constitution and by the hope of finding a tolerant society. From the 1960s onwards, new waves of Jewish immigration from the Southern Cone and Central America were drawn toward the northern neighbor on American shores. This historical context is at the core of Laura Limonic's research.

Kugel and Frijoles: Latino Jews in the United States explores the different ways in which Jewish immigrants from Latin America (mostly from Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico) navigate the different ethnic and racial landscapes upon arriving in the US, where 39.5% of world Jewry currently resides. The book focuses on the processes of group construction within US society and the formation of a panethnic identity as Latino Jews. According to the author, this is an interesting case study, since Jewish immigrants from Latin America are not clearly identified in the US racial and ethnic classification system and instead are commonly viewed as white; i.e. as privileged newcomers who quickly acquire the status of insiders, unlike non-Jewish Latino immigrants.

Limonic studies the in-between status of this group of immigrants: Although primarily classified as Jewish (i.e. white), in certain situations national identities overlap ethnic or religious identities as they correlate to fellow immigrants from their home countries. Moreover, a new panethnic identity emerges, as stated by the interviewees, as Latinos in the US, yet this social construct of Latin American identity is not embraced without conflict or doubt. Class, family status, prior social capital, and level of education are among the factors that determine their successful integration into the US and their affiliation with different groups.

The book opens by reviewing the history of Jewish immigration to Latin America and the formation of ethnoreligious identity as a minority group within the wider Catholic society in Argentina, Mexico and Venezuela. The following chapter shifts to focus on the formation of the Jewish community in the United States as a "majority minority," a privileged group accepted by the mainstream despite its relatively small size in comparison to other racial and ethnic migratory groups (21). The author then shifts to examine the difficulties associated with defining a Latino panethnic identity in the US as a post-migratory construct, which constitutes a secondary or tertiary identity for Latin American Jews. The analysis of the various circles of identification in which Latin American Jews affiliate with fellow Jews, Latinos or compatriots highlights the fluidity and ambiguity of such ethnic membership in the United States. Furthermore, as indicated in Chapter six, various institutional, informal, social and religious networks provide Latino Jews support and cater to different individual and collective needs. Institutions such as the Jewish Latin Center in New York or the various synagogues, Jewish schools and community centers in Aventura, Florida, emphasize the relevance of geographical proximity and of an identified tangible place to express these affiliations.

This sociological research is based upon eighty-five in-depth interviews with Jewish immigrants from Latin America who settled in Southern Florida, New York and the Northeast, and California. It is based also on participant observations at Latino Jewish organizations and social events, conducted from 2010 to 2016, combined with quantitative data from the Pew Research Center's study on American Jews. By employing combined methodology, Limonic arrives at the following conclusions: Navigating...