Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines? Essays on Ethnicity, Identity, and Diaspora (review)

In the preface to this collection of essays, Raanan Rein describes a Passover Seder he attended in Buenos Aires a few years back. The Jewish-Argentine guests ate traditional Ashkenazi and Argentine fare and sang holiday songs in "broken Hebrew," all the while sneaking glances at the soccer game that played in the background. This anecdote, and other similar ones, aptly set the stage for a book that calls attention to the hybridity of Jewish and Argentine identities. With a thorough survey of the extant literature, and a thoughtful analysis of the trajectory of the field over the past fifty years, Rein argues that the literature to date on "Latin American Jewry" has generally over-emphasized the Jewish identity at the expense of the Latin American. The pioneers of the field were generally Israeli scholars, who lacked understandings of the broader Latin American context and focused mostly on anti-Semitism, the growth of Zionism, and Israeli-Latin American relations. In this book and in a collaborative work with Jeffrey Lesser, Rein proposes a renovation of the field that starts with viewing the population in question as Jewish-Latin American to stress "national identity without denying the possibility of a Diasporic identity" (3).

Rein identifies promising developments in this regard. In the last twenty years Latin Americanists, trained as historians, anthropologists, and sociologists, have turned their attention to the Jewish experience in the continent. Rein is a prime example: he is an Israeli historian whose earliest work considered modern Argentine and Spanish history, but he has now researched and written extensively on Jewish Argentines. In the first essay Rein calls on his growing number of colleagues to recognize that Jewish communities, like other Latin American ethnic groups, are internally diverse and part of broader national stories. He rejects Jewish essentialism, an overemphasis on anti-Semitism, and the assumption that Jews are unbendingly loyal to Israel. In addition, he calls for a consideration of the experience and identities of those Latin Americans who have made Aliya. He is also hopeful that his proposals might inspire a renaissance in studies of Latin America's many other ethnic groups. The subsequent essays are focused on the Jewish-Argentine community and fulfill many of his goals. They are ordered chronologically, spanning the twentieth century. In every case, he describes the political and social context with great detail so as to explain Jewish actions and identities. The essays are all meticulously researched, reflecting an exhaustive reading of the secondary literature and of various primary sources including governmental documents, diplomatic records, memoirs, oral histories, and American, Israeli, Argentine, and Jewish-Argentine press.

In several essays Rein tackles the assumption that Jewish Argentines were perpetually burdened by anti-Semitism—as he must to establish that Jews have felt quite attached to the Argentine nation. Those who claim pervasive anti-Semitism in Argentina often point to the nation's neutrality during World War II and the entrance of Nazi war criminals after the War. Rein makes good use of his expertise in foreign relations and the Peronist regime to debunk these assumptions. While there were some Nazi sympathizers in circles of power during the war, the nation's neutrality was primarily rooted in economic interests and a rejection of United States hegemony. Similarly, the portrayal of Argentina as a safe-haven for Nazis after the War has been overblown due to the notoriety of Eichmann and Mengele. Rein also emphasizes that the relationship between the local Jewish community and Perón was not as hostile as often portrayed. Many Jews were ardent Peronists even if the majority of Jews were not. Nonetheless, Jewish institutions worked diligently to erase the history of any friendly relations when the political winds changed after Perón's overthrow.

Rein also considers how the negotiation of Jewish and Argentine identities changed over time. He offers a close reading of a Zionist periodical published in the 1920s and 1930s by wealthy Sephardi Jews...