Full Description
The book studies Jewish life in Latin America through a dynamic past-present timeline. It combines the national, regional, and transnational dimensions by analyzing central crossing axes: the national within the diasporic, the transnational dialectically traversing both, and the national and regional dimensions developing in a global and interconnected Jewish world. Delving into the dilemmas and challenges that Modernity posed to Jews, this book emphasizes the practical and ideational responses it evoked. For Latin American Jews, this has involved moving from historical territories to new geographies, bringing with them the transmigration of worldviews and ideologies that were later re-signified.. The roots, displacements, embeddedness, and relocation of Jewish life are explored, shedding light on the richness and dilemmas of Jewish Modernity and Multiple Modernities. Thus, it critically analyzes membership criteria, social practices, and political participation, underscoring how visibility and agency in the public sphere were defined in different periods and contexts through the dyad belonging and Otherness. Its focus on Zionism and Mexico as a case study contributes to the field with original, in-depth research. With Diaspora, globalization, and transnationalism as an analytical framework, the book offers a unique and compelling insight into social and communal change and the multiple interactions of the contemporary Jewish world, sparking the curiosity and engagement of the academic audience and interested public.
"This voluminous, far-reaching work merits the greatest attention. This is the most valuable contribution to date to the study of today's world Jewry, with special attention to Latin America - and Mexico explicitly. This work focuses on Jews' participation in the globalization of the epoch...The author's approach proceeds with a dialectical methodology focusing on the contradictory pressures that account for their dynamism...these pages are among the "must-be-read" works about Jewry's present-day and coming future."
Eliezer Ben-Rafael, renowned sociologist, Professor Emeritus Tel Avis University, Editor of the Brill series Jewish Identities in a Changing World
"Professor Bokser Liwerant's study of the Jewish experience in Latin America bridges with unprecedented depth and breadth across many transnational and global dimensions...This book uniquely integrates the universal issues of equity, humanity, and civil rights with an acute perception of Jewish civilization and peoplehood particularism. As such, it is an exemplary work of great value for social scientists and Jewish scholars."
Sergio DellaPergola, leading socio-demographer of the Jewish People, Professor Emeritus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
"In a world where antisemitism appears again in many countries as a key moral and political issue we need solid sociological analysis and deep historical knowledge of Jews and Judaism...The Latin-American experience is usually less known than the US or the French and European ones...This is why Judit Bokser Liwerant's book is so useful and precious, combining empirical research and her unique maestria in rigorous conceptualization, proposing an in-depth reflexive analysis and theoretical framework."
Michel Wieviorka, prominent sociologist, Ecole des Hautes Études en Science Sociales
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Figures and Tables
Introductory Essay. Latin American Jewry: A Historical Conceptual Pathway
1 When Biography and Scientific Research Meet
2 Challenges to Knowledge
Part 1
Modernity as a Palimpsest
1 Dilemmas of Jews and Judaism in Modernity: Snapshots of an Effervescent Period of Challenges and Responses
1 Introductory Remarks
2 The Avatars of Modernity
3 Encounters and Interactions in History: Trends and Dilemmas
4 Mapping New Meanings. Snapshots of a Cartography
5 A Critical Reality, A New Ideological Corpus: Modernity and Zionism
6 Gazes into the Past, Critical Readings toward the Present
7 A Conceptual Detour, an Unfinished Reflection
2 From Modernity to Multiple Modernities: Latin America in the Americas
1 Multiple Modernities from a Latin American Perspective
2 Walking the Scale: A Conceptual and Historical Journey through Mexico
3 The Changing Reconfiguration of Modernity
4 Afterword as a Clue to This Book
3 Modernity's Historical and Conceptual Paths: Globalization, Secularization and Collective Identities
1 A Conceptual Detour
2 Social and Political thought: The Debates and Their Sequences
3 Broadening the Axes of the Debate
4 New Challenges between the Individual and the Collective: The Universe of Religion Amidst Secularization Processes
5 Universalism and Particularism Revisited
Part 2
Latin America's Time and Scales
4 A Dilemmatic Binary: Being National/Being Transnational
1 Introductory Remarks
2 A Conceptual and Historical Journey: Mexico and Latin America. The Foundations of being National and Its Limits
3 Public Sphere, Private Spaces. Transnational Links in Mexico and Latin America
4 Building Democracy. Current Changes and Redefinitions of the Binary. Regional and Global Implications
5 A New Phase of the Transnational Moment
5 The Jews of Latin America: Changing Constellations
1 Latin America's Changes: Play and Counterplay
2 A World of Identities: A New Global Overview
3 The Vertices of Interaction
6 Diasporas and Transnationalism: New Inquiries on Latin American Jews
1 Conceptual Reflections
2 Context and Theorization
3 An Inquiry into Ethno-National and Transnational Diasporas. The Cases of the Ashkenazi Kehillah of Buenos Aires and Mexico City
3.1 Argentina
3.2 Mexico
4 Selected Diasporic Approaches to Latin American Jews: A Discussion
5 Epilogue. Images of Otherness: Transnationalism and Ethno-Religious, Pan-Ethnic and National Diasporas
Part 3
Into the Past: Between Acceptance and Othering
7 The Thirties as Crucial Years: Jewish Immigration and Antisemitism
1 The Onset of the Decade: Immigration Policies and Antisemitic Expressions
2 The Cárdenas Regime: Immigration Policies and Antisemitic Expressions
3 Jewish Refugees: Alterity and Prejudice
8 Otherness in History and Memory: The Jewish Refugees
1 Introductory Remarks
2 From History to Memory. A Brief Conceptual Detour
3 The Construction of Memory and Its Narratives: Mexico as a Haven
9 Collective Identities in the Public Sphere
1 A Gaze into Society and the Public Sphere from the Immigrant's Reality
1.1 Trajectories in the Tempo of Convergences and Divergences
1.2 The Changing Public Sphere
Part 4
Between a New Diaspora and a National Home
10 The Genesis of Zionism in Mexico
1 Zionism on the Move
2 The Origins of Zionism in the Communal Space
3 Ideological Strengths and Organizational Weaknesses: A Paradox?
4 Renewed Ideological Debates
11 New Patterns of Action in the Public Sphere: Convergences and Divergences between National and Transnational Scales
1 Introductory Historical Remarks
2 Society Takes on Jewish National Aspirations
3 The Mexican Government's Stance on the Palestine Question
4 The Zionist Leadership's Political Action
5 Mexico's Abstention—Discourse and Reality
12 The Impact of the Six-Day War on Jewish communal Life
1 The Organizational Axis: The Redefinition of Spaces
2 An Interactional Axis: A Source of Legitimacy
13 Reconfiguration of the Regional and Global Scenarios: Zionism = Racism at a Critical Juncture
1 President Echeverría's Foreign Policy
2 Communal Practices, Actions, and Reactions
3 Discourse, Symbolic Representation, and Delegitimization
4 Delegitimization and Symbolic Violence
14 The Changing Status of Zionism and Israel in Latin American Jewry
1 Introductory Remarks
2 Grounding Trends
3 Changing Patterns
4 Contextual Parameters
5 Redefining Centers in a Globalized World: The Territorial Referent
6 Israel in Changing Educational Ecology
7 National Funds: Solidarity and Pragmatism
8 Going Global: Faces of an Ethno-Transnational Diaspora
9 Changing Constellations: Continuity and Discontinuity
Part 5
Redefining Diaspora in Times of Transnationalism
15 Latin America Revisited Facing New Realities and Conceptual Challenges
1 A Gaze into the Foundations: Past Globality
2 Final Remarks
16 Into a Globalized World: Latin American Jews in the United States—Between Being and Belonging
1 Latin American Jews on the Move
2 A Conceptual Round
3 The Relocation of Latin American Jewish Life in an American Mobile Environment
17 Latin American Jews in the United States: Cultural Encounters: Similarities and Dissimilarities
1 Integration, Distinctiveness, and Continuity
2 Jewish Multi-level Transnationalism in the Twenty-First Century
3 Closing Remarks
18 Expanding Frontiers and Affirming Belonging: Youth Travel to Israel
1 Introductory Remarks
2 Building Jewish Life/Being Jewish in Latin America
3 The Changing Reality of Latin American Jewish Life: The Mirror of the Educational World
4 Trends and Findings
5 Type of Trips to Israel
6 A Comparative Detour: Taglit Trips
7 Summary and Discussion
Part 6
Which Modernity? Projects, History, Memory and Otherness
19 The Holocaust—Memory, Victims, and Morality: On Zygmunt Bauman and Beyond
1 Which Modernity When History Is Absent
2 Rationality-Morality: A Problematic Binomial
3 The Memory of Horror, Its Representation, the Image
4 Jusidman's Prussian Blue
5 Concluding Remarks
20 Conceptual and Methodological Clues for Approaching the Connections between Mexico and the Holocaust: Separate or Interconnected Histories?
1 The Holocaust and Latin America: A Brief Overview
2 International/Intergovernmental Connections
3 Between Connections and Disconnections: Mexico and the Refugee Crisis
4 Transnational Interconnections: Actors, Decisions, Implications
4.1 The Jewish World
4.2 The Circulation of Ideas: Intellectuals, Activists and the Political Elite in Mexico
4.3 The Mexican Press
5 Interconnections on the Individual Level: The Refugee-Victim-Survivor
6 Final Reflections
21 Sinopia and Pentimenti: Conceptual Approaches and Changing Paths: Antisemitism in Latin America
1 Sinopia and pentimenti: A Required Clarification
2 Building the tropos: Sinopia and Pentimenti
3 Continuities and Discontinuities and Related Prejudices: Recurrences and Changes
4 Conceptual Debates
5 The National, the Regional, the Global
6 Snapshots of Historical and Sociological Perspectives
7 Changes in Discursive Antisemitism: from the Printed Press to the Social Networks
22 Jews in The Americas. A Continental Gaze
1 The Americas: Identifying the Object
2 Conceptual Approaches: A Promising Albeit Debated Triad
3 Into the Region: Structures, Obstacles, Trends
4 The United States
5 A Different North: Canada
6 Latin America: The Region's Diversity and Comparative Remarks
7 The Triad Today: Selected Snapshots
8 South to North and Beyond
9 A Global Memory
10 Concluding Remarks
Bibliography
Index
