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This book puts two of the most significant Jewish Diaspora communities outside of the U.S. into conversation with one another. At times contributor-pairs directly compare unique aspects of two Jewish histories, politics, or cultures. At other times, they juxtapose. Some chapters focus on literature, poetry, theatre, or sport; others on immigration, antisemitism, or health. Taken together, the essays in Promised Lands North and South offer sparkling insight and new depth on the modern Jewish global experience.

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.

Between 1905 and 1930, more than one hundred thousand Jews left Central and Eastern Europe to settle permanently in Argentina. This book explores how these Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi immigrants helped to create a new urban strain of the Argentine national identity. Like other immigrants, Jews embraced Buenos Aires and Argentina while keeping ethnic identities—they spoke and produced new literary works in their native Yiddish and continued Jewish cultural traditions brought from Europe, from foodways to holidays. The author examines a variety of sources including Yiddish poems and songs, police records, and advertisements to focus on the intersection and shifting boundaries of ethnic and national identities.In addition to the interplay of national and ethnic identities, Nouwen illuminates the importance of gender roles, generation, and class, as well as relationships between Jews and non-Jews. She focuses on the daily lives of ordinary Jews in Buenos Aires. Most Jews were working class, though some did rise to become middleclass professionals. Some belonged to organizations that served the Jewish community, while others were more informally linked to their ethnic group through their family and friends. Jews were involved in leftist politics from anarchism to unionism, and also started Zionist organizations. By exploring the diversity of Jewish experiences in Buenos Aires, Nouwen shows how individuals articulated their multiple identities, as well as how those identities formed and overlapped.

Congratulations to Adriana Brodsky and Raanan Rein whose edited volume has been chosen as the winner of the 2013 Latin American Jewish Studies Association Book Prize! The New Jewish Argentina aims at filling in important lacunae in the existing historiography of Jewish Argentines. Moving away from the political history of the organized community, most articles are devoted to social and cultural history, including unaffiliated Jews, women and gender, criminals, printing presses and book stores. These essays, written by scholars from various countries, consider the tensions between the national and the trans-national and offer a mosaic of identities which is relevant to all interested in Jewish history, Argentine history and students of ethnicity and diaspora. This collection problematizes the existing image of Jewish-Argentines and looks at Jews not just as persecuted ethnics, idealized agricultural workers, or as political actors in Zionist politics.'This book is a must-read for students and scholars interested in immigration to Latin America, Ethnic History, and Jewish Studies, but its readership could extend to anybody who is interested in this chapter of social and cultural history.'Ariana Huberman, Haverford College

Made of Shores places Jewish Argentinean fiction within the context of Latin American literature and Judaic Studies. It offers the reader to participate actively in the scholarly debates on issues of memory and identity, and the different representations of Jewishness in Latin America. By reviewing the new material conditions within Argentina and its diasporas, this book imposes a new reflection on what Judeo-Argentinean fiction is all about

The essays gathered here challenge essentialist concepts and overemphasis on Jewish particularity, as well as the common discourse of Jewish victimology. At the same time, they reveal how the Jews, like other ethnic groups, are not monolithic but fragmented by place of origin, social class, political ideologies, and gender. The topics discussed include the non-political Zionism espoused by Sephardic Jews during the first half of the 20th century, Argentine neutrality during World War II, the entry of Nazi war criminals to Argentina, the regime of Juan Perón and its attitudes towards Jewish-Argentines and the state of Israel, the reactions of Jews to the anti-Semitic wave in Argentina following the kidnapping of Adolf Eichman by Mossad agents, the Latin American community in Israel, and protests by Argentine exiles in Israel against the 1978 world-cup soccer games, played in Argentina during a brutal military regime.'...Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines?: Essays on Ethnicity, Identity and Diaspora is a critical contribution encouraging more subtle approaches to studying the identities of Jewish populations in Latin America.'Steven Hyland Jr., Wingate University