Internationally renowned essayist and cultural commentator Ilan Stavans spent five years traveling from across a dozen countries in Latin America, in search of what defines the Jewish communities in the region, whose roots date back to Christopher Columbus’s arrival. In the tradition of V.S. Naipaul’s explorations of India, the Caribbean, and the Arab World, he came back with an extraordinarily vivid travelogue. Stavans talks to families of the desaparecidos in Buenos Aires, to “Indian Jews,” and to people affiliated with neo-Nazi groups in Patagonia. He also visits Spain to understand the long-term effects of the Inquisition, the American Southwest habitat of “secret Jews,” and Israel, where immigrants from Latin America have reshaped the Jewish state. Along the way, he looks for the proverbial “seventh heaven,” which, according to the Talmud, out of proximity with the divine, the meaning of life in general, and Jewish life in particular, becomes clearer. The Seventh Heaven is a masterful work in Stavans’s ongoing quest to find a convergence between the personal and the historical.

Jewish writing has only recently begun to be recognized as a major cultural phenomenon in Latin American literature. Nevertheless, the majority of students and even Latin American literary specialists, remain uninformed about this significant body of writing. This Dictionary is the first comprehensive bibliographical and critical source book on Latin American Jewish literature. It represents the research efforts of 50 scholars from the United States, Latin America, and Israel who are dedicated to the advancement of Latin American Jewish studies. An introduction by the editor is followed by entries on 118 authors that provide both biographical information and a critical summary of works. Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico-home to the largest Jewish communities in Latin America-are the countries with the greatest representation, but there are essays on writers from Venezuela, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Cuba.

Groundbreaking anthology that explores the intersections of Jewish and LAtin American cultures through the varies styles and perspective of gifted women writers.

"Most readers north of the Rio Grande are not aware that waves of immigrants have created an ethnically diverse culture in Latin America, a mosaic of particular visions and voices that includes a cohesive Jewish community with roots in Eastern Europe and as far back as pre-Columbian Spain. In this unique anthology, Ilan Stavans - who is at home both in Jewish and Latino cultures - introduces us to engaging writers, the histories of the different communities in which they emerged, their literary tradition and cultural predicament." "Organized from a geographic and historical perspective, Tropical Synagogues includes stories by acclaimed and new voices - some appearing in English for the first time. We encounter the beginnings of the Jewish literary tradition on the continent in the work of Alberto Gerchunoff, who immigrated to Argentina during the late nineteenth century and influenced future generations of writers such as Isidoro Blaisten, German Rozenmacher, Gerardo Mario Goloboff, and Mario Szichman. Stories also appear by celebrated writers such as Moacyr Scliar, Clarice Lispector, Isaac Goldemberg, and Victor Perera, who may be more familiar to English-speaking readers. Another vital part of this tradition are the innovative women writers who have been a major force in the development of Latin American fiction, represented here by Alicia Steimberg, Nora Glickman, Aida Bortnik, Margo Glantz, Esther Seligson, Elisa Lerner, Angelina Muniz-Huberman, and Alicia Lubitch Domecq." "The image of the "tropical synagogue" evokes the collective voice and imagination that come to life on the pages of this book. Conjuring a fantastic synthesis of the Old and New World, tradition and exoticism, sensuality and metaphysics, it is a telling metaphor for the little known but compelling short fiction collected here."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Jewish presence in Latin America has produced a remarkable body of literature that gives voice to the fascinating experience of Jews in Latin American lands. This book explores how trauma and memory influence the formation of Jewish identity for the fictional Jewish characters of five novels written by Jewish authors born in the Southern Cone.

Pomegranate Seedsis the first collection of the oral tradition of Latin American Jews to be presented in English. These thirty-four tales span the 500 years of Jewish presence in Latin America and the Caribbean. The folktales and cultural oral narratives were often based on actual events, recorded not only from the Ashkenazi perspective but from the Sephardic and Oriental as well. Like dispersed pomegranate seeds, all the stories come from a common cluster, yet each is a separate kernel. The stories are short, between five and fifteen pages, and each is carefully annotated. In addition to gathering stories from eleven Latin American countries, the author found material in the United States and Israel. Regardless of their origin, several tales have to do with personal feelings, emotional insights, and interpretation of the protagonists, while others deal with happy or traumatic events that cannot be forgotten and dreams that have not been fulfilled. Not surprisingly, trauma and bigotry are common threads through some of the stories. These are tales, as Nadia Grosser Nagarajan says, "concealed by tropical greenery, encircled by vast jungles and flowing majestic rivers that echo many voices and reflect many views and visions."

The humorous and moving story of three generations of a Jewish family in Argentina.