This volume is devoted to Jewish Argentines in the twentieth century, and deliberately avoids restrictive or prescriptive definitions of Jews and Judaism. Instead, it focuses on people whose identities include a Jewish component, irrespective of social class and gender, and regardless of whether they are religious or secular, Ashkenazi or Sephardic, or affiliated with the organized Jewish community.

“A much-needed monograph on the role of Sephardic Jews in Argentina, and . . . an important contribution to the study of Jews in Latin America overall” (Choice). At the turn of the twentieth century, Jews from North Africa and the Middle East were called Turcos (“Turks”). Seen as distinct from Ashkenazim, Sephardi Jews weren’t even identified as Jews. Yet the story of Sephardi Jewish identity has been deeply impactful on Jewish history across the world. Adriana M. Brodsky follows the history of Sephardim as they arrived in Argentina, created immigrant organizations, founded synagogues and cemeteries, and built strong ties with coreligionists around the country. Brodsky demonstrates how fragmentation based on areas of origin gave way to the gradual construction of a single Sephardi identity. This unifying identity is predicated both on Zionist identification (with the State of Israel) and “national” feelings (for Argentina), and that Sephardi Jews assumed leadership roles in national Jewish organizations once they integrated into the much larger Askenazi community. Rather than assume that Sephardi identity was fixed and unchanging, Brodsky highlights the strategic nature of this identity, constructed both from within the various Sephardi groups and from the outside, and reveals that Jewish identity must be understood as part of the process of becoming Argentine.

Splendor, Decline, and Rediscovery of Yiddish in Latin America presents Yiddish culture as it developed in an area seldom associated with the language. Yet several countries—Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay—became centers for Yiddish literature, journalism, political activism, theater, and music. Chapters by historians, linguists, and literary critics explore the flourishing of Yiddish there in the early 20th century, its retraction in the 1960’s, and contemporary endeavors to rescue this marginalized legacy. Topics discussed in the volume include the literary figures of the “Jewish gaucho” and the peddler, the regional Yiddish press, the communal struggle against trafficking in women, cultural responses to the Holocaust, intra-Jewish conflict during the Cold War, debates on assimilation versus tradition, and emergent postvernacular Yiddish. "The editors explain the renewed interest in—or 'revival' of—Yiddish in Latin America from the 1980s on as part of a broader global phenomenon. This volume sheds light on that phenomenon, while also being a part of it." -Amy Kerner, Brown University, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina 30.1 (2019) "As a pioneering scholarly anthology in its field, Splendor, Decline, and Rediscovery of Yiddish in Latin America is to be warmly greeted." -Zachary M. Baker, Stanford University, Journal of Jewish Identities 13.1 (2020)

Argentine Jews in the Age of Revolt traces the ongoing efforts among Argentine Jews to rethink the Argentine nation, Jewish membership in it, and the nature of Jewishness itself from 1955 to 1983. Beginning with the celebrations around the supposed triumph of the “liberal nation” after the overthrow of Juan Perón, this study examines Jewish activists’ discourse through years of rapid transitions between civil and military rule, massive social protest, escalating violence, and finally the brutal military dictatorship of 1976 to1983. It argues that these were crucial years in which Jewish activists forcefully discarded previous understandings of the nation and pioneered novel definitions of Jewishness and Zionism designed to resonate in a Latin America upended by revolutionary ferment.

If you attend a soccer match in Buenos Aires of the local Atlanta Athletic Club, you will likely hear the rival teams chanting anti-Semitic slogans. This is because the neighborhood of Villa Crespo has long been considered a Jewish district, and its soccer team, Club Atlético Atlanta, has served as an avenue of integration into Argentine culture. Through the lens of this neighborhood institution, Raanan Rein offers an absorbing social history of Jews in Latin America. Since the Second World War, there has been a conspicuous Jewish presence among the fans, administrators and presidents of the Atlanta soccer club. For the first immigrant generation, belonging to this club was a way of becoming Argentines. For the next generation, it was a way of maintaining ethnic Jewish identity. Now, it is nothing less than family tradition for third generation Jewish Argentines to support Atlanta. The soccer club has also constituted one of the few spaces where both Jews and non-Jews, affiliated Jews and non-affiliated Jews, Zionists and non-Zionists, have interacted. The result has been an active shaping of the local culture by Jewish Latin Americans to their own purposes. Offering a rare window into the rich culture of everyday life in the city of Buenos Aires created by Jewish immigrants and their descendants, Fútbol, Jews, and the Making of Argentina represents a pioneering study of the intersection between soccer, ethnicity, and identity in Latin America and makes a major contribution to Jewish History, Latin American History, and Sports History.

The history of the Jewish people has been a history of migration. Although Jews invariably brought with them their traditional ideas about food during these migrations, just as invariably they engaged with the foods they encountered in their new environments. Their culinary habits changed as a result of both these migrations and the new political and social realities they encountered. The stories in this volume examine the sometimes bewildering kaleidoscope of food experiences generated by new social contacts, trade, political revolutions, wars, and migrations, both voluntary and compelled. This panoramic history of Jewish food highlights its breadth and depth on a global scale from Renaissance Italy to the post-World War II era in Israel, Argentina, and the United States and critically examines the impact of food on Jewish lives and on the complex set of laws, practices, and procedures that constitutes the Jewish dietary system and regulates what can be eaten, when, how, and with whom. Global Jewish Foodways offers a fresh perspective on how historical changes through migration, settlement, and accommodation transformed Jewish food and customs.

Originally published in 1910, this stirring depiction of shtetl life in Argentina is once again available in paperback.