Oy, My Buenos Aires: Jewish Immigrants and the Creation of Argentine National Identity

By Mollie Lewis Nouwen

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Release date: Sep 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9780826353511

Mollie Lewis Nouwen

Mollie Lewis Nouwen is assistant professor of history at the University of South Alabama.

Book preview

Oy, My Buenos Aires

Oy, My Buenos Aires

JEWISH IMMIGRANTS AND THE CREATION OF

ARGENTINE NATIONAL IDENTITY

Mollie Lewis Nouwen

© 2013 by the University of New Mexico Press

All rights reserved. Published 2013

Printed in the United States of America

18 17 16 15 14 13      1 2 3 4 5 6

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Nouwen, Mollie Lewis.

Oy, My Buenos Aires : Jewish immigrants and the creation of Argentine national

identity / Mollie Lewis Nouwen.

p. cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8263-5350-4 (cloth : alk. paper) —

ISBN 978-0-8263-5351-1 (electronic)

1. Jews—Argentina—History—20th century. 2. Jews—Argentina—

Buenos Aires—History—20th century. 3. Jews—Argentina—Social life

and customs. 4. Jews—Argentina—Identity. 5. Argentina—Ethnic relations.

I. Title.

F3021.J5N68 2013

982’.004924—dc23

2013008670

For my parents

Contents

Image.html

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

A Note on Translation and Transliteration

Introduction

Chapter One

Argentina: A Land of Immigrants

Chapter Two

From Colony to City: Jewish Immigrants, 1889–1930

Chapter Three

And from a gringo I was transformed into a criollo: Deploying Markers of National Identity

Chapter Four

Building the City, Forging the Nation: Ethnic and National Spaces

Chapter Five

From Stolen Textiles to Off-Track Betting: Urban Crime and Disorder

Chapter Six

Eating, Drinking, and Dancing: The Gendered and Generational Nature of Social Lives

Chapter Seven

Individual Lives: Helping Create the Porteño Identity

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

FIGURES

1. Cartoon showing options for Jewish immigrants in Argentina

2. A gaucho and his horse under an ombu tree in an ad for Max Glücksmann’s record stores

3. Advertisement for Max Glücksmann’s recording of the tango Buenos Aires, picturing tango legend Carlos Gardel

4. Advertisement for Jacobo Waiss’s Cafés y Tés Sión store

5. Shul Impression, cartoon illustrating changes in religion and traditional identities among Argentine Jews

6. A man purchasing premade food from a dispenser at an automat

7. A man serving himself a drink at an automat, excited by the novelty of the space

8. A program for a dance and concert celebrating the twelfth anniversary of the Unión Israelita Bessarabia

9. How Summer Is Enjoyed, cartoon from Far Groys un Kleyn

TABLES

1. Immigration to Argentina, 1857–1930

2. Population of Buenos Aires, 1855–1936

3. Comparison of estimates of the Jewish population of Argentina, 1895–1930

4. Bloch’s estimates of the Jewish population of Argentina, 1900–1930

Acknowledgments

IN BOTH COLLEGE and graduate school I was lucky enough to have mentors who encouraged me. Without them, this book would not exist. I became interested in this topic as an undergraduate at Whitman College, under the supervision of Julie Charlip. She helped me become a better writer and scholar. My mentor, Jeffrey Lesser, deserves my eternal thanks. Throughout the entire manuscript process, Jeff encouraged, supported, and challenged me to become a better historian.

Many colleagues read and commented on my work in various forms, helping me to refine and polish it. David Sheinin has been enormously helpful in pushing me to rethink my theoretical framework, questioning my methodology, and offering thought-provoking commentary on my project at various stages. Raanan Rein has consistently listened to me and sent me in new directions as he assisted and encouraged my work. His comments on the manuscript for a final revision made this a much stronger book. Alex Borucki has always made me laugh as he helped and supported me personally and academically from Mobile to Montevideo. His knowledge of Argentine history, historiography, and the finer points of idiomatic early twentieth-century Spanish helped me comprehend the idiosyncratic culture of Buenos Aires and I can never thank him enough. Billy Acree provided insightful comments on an early version of the manuscript. Valeria Manzano has been both a great friend and colleague, especially in sharing her knowledge of Argentine popular culture. My colleague at the University of South Alabama Daniel Rogers read the entire manuscript and offered invaluable advice on how to get it ready to send to publishers. At Emory University, Eric Goldstein and Marina Rustow helped me tackle some of the theoretical and methodological issues. Colleagues Rafael Ioris, Brad Lange, and Fabricio Prado read early parts of the manuscript and offered helpful comments.

Many people provided assistance both in learning Yiddish and with translations. In Buenos Aires, Esther Szwarc helped enormously at different points in the process. At Emory University, Marni Davis was a great study partner, and Marc Miller and Miriam Udell provided translation help. During the book process, Alan Astro provided the information I needed to complete my translations.

I incurred enormous debts of gratitude doing the research for this project in Buenos Aires. Ariel Svarch did an amazing job following up on the final images and permissions for the book. At the IWO Archive, archivist Silvia Hansman provided essential assistance in locating the bulk of the documentation for this work. The rest of the staff of the IWO, particularly Ezequiel Semo and Debora Kacowicz, were also extremely helpful in finding materials for me. At the Biblioteca Tornquist, Patricia León’s knowledge and professionalism made it a pleasure to do research there. At the Centro de Estudios Históricos Policiales Comisario Inspector Francisco L. Romay, Sr. Kovi and his colleagues allowed me full access to their resources, for which I was very thankful. The staff at the Centro Marc Turkow (AMIA) were very helpful in allowing me to consult their excellent oral history collection. Andrés Glucksmann, grandson of Max Glücksmann, was kind enough to open up his home to me and allow me access to the family papers.

In Buenos Aires, many friends and colleagues offered help and suggestions. Marta Goldberg gave me a place to stay and help in navigating both the streets and archives of Buenos Aires. She has always been a wonderful friend and invaluable resource. Nerina Viascovsky is a great friend and colleague who invited me into her home and shared her research while providing comments and resources that helped my own work. My colleagues from the Núcleo de Estudios Judíos, particularly Alejandro Dujovne and Emmanuel Kahan, have continued to be interested in and supportive of my work. I have also benefited from the knowledge of Argentine scholars and scholars studying Argentina, including Alicia Bernasconi, José Moya, Sandra McGee Deutsch, Adriana Brodsky, Susana Skura, and Beatrice Gurwitz. Finally, I want to thank Rodrigo Vergara and his family and friends for being my porteño family.

At the University of New Mexico Press, Clark Whitehorn was enthusiastic and interested from the beginning and has been an exceptional editor. Felicia Cedillos provided important feedback on the illustrations. Finally, the unnamed reviewer for the press pushed me to expand the work and rethink key elements, making the final product much stronger.

Funding for the project was provided through Emory University’s Woodruff Fellowship, Emory Graduate School of Arts and Sciences International Fund Research Grant, the History Department Mathews Award, the U.S. Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Grant, and the University of South Alabama Research Council.

My final thanks are to my family, who were essential to making this project possible. I feel like my parents, brother, and cousin have actually experienced the lengthy process with me. I think we are all excited to see it come to a conclusion. My mom in particular deserves a prize for reading and proofreading almost every draft of the whole work. Finally, I am eternally grateful to Chris and Henry, who love and support me every day.

A Note on Translation and Transliteration

ALL OF THE TRANSLATIONS from Spanish and Yiddish are my own, unless otherwise noted. Translations of valesko, the Spanish rendering of a Yiddish accent and grammatical issues (a dialect often used in cartoons or popular theater) are also my own. I tried to keep the spirit of the poor grammar and pronunciation (intended to be humorous) in the English translation.

In my own transliterations of Yiddish, I have used Uriel Weinreich’s method for Yiddish to English transliteration. However, many of the Yiddish terms are still in use and the organizations with Yiddish names are still in existence. These terms and organization names were transliterated from Yiddish to Spanish in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when orthographic rules had yet to be established. In these cases I have kept the spellings used by Argentine Jews at the time, even though they do not follow Weinreich’s rules of transliteration. For proper names of immigrant authors who came to Argentina with Yiddish names but often went by a slightly different form in Spanish, I have used the spellings that appear in Argentine scholarship on the authors.

Introduction

ON JANUARY 5, 1918, the popular illustrated weekly Caras y Caretas (Faces and masks) ran an article about the Jewish press in Buenos Aires.¹ The piece, which included photographs of Jewish writers and a building where one of the newspapers was housed as well as examples of Yiddish script, showed non-Jewish readers how Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants had become part of the porteño (Buenos Aires) identity and landscape. In the piece, León Mas, director of the Yiddish-language Di Yidishe Tsaitung (The Jewish daily), proclaimed, We are creating work that is not only Jewish . . . but also very Argentine.² He went on to explain that the love and the respect for the country of our children [is] not incompatible with the love for the country of our ancestors. This is the lofty mission of the Jewish press here: to create new ties without losing our sacred ancient ties, that have given force and cohesion to the race. For the thousands of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants who made their home in Argentina during the early twentieth century, Mas’s words would have struck a chord.³ Like Mas, they retained Jewish ethnic identities while embracing Argentine national identity. Many non-Jewish readers of the article might have been surprised at the presence of a Yiddish press in Buenos Aires (since Jews were not one of the larger immigrant groups) while at the same time being impressed with the dedication that Mas declared for his adopted nation. The Caras y Caretas article showed the Yiddish press, and by extension Jewish immigrants, in a positive light because of their stated loyalty to the nation.

Between 1889 and 1930 over one hundred thousand Jews left Central and Eastern Europe to settle permanently in Argentina, arriving relatively late in the story of Argentine immigration, which was at its heaviest between 1870 and 1930.⁴ Primarily speakers of Yiddish (a language based on German, written in Hebrew characters), most of the immigrants came from the borderland area between Poland and Russia known as the Pale of Settlement. Before World War I most Jewish immigrants carried passports from Russia; after the war, partly because of the redrawing of boundaries, most arrived from Poland, though there were also sizeable groups from Romania, Lithuania, Germany, Austria, and France. The Ashkenazi Jews arrived in a city that had been dealing with immigrants since the middle of the nineteenth century—Italians, Spaniards, and smaller groups from throughout Europe.⁵ Jews, along with other newcomers in Buenos Aires during the early twentieth century, were central to the forging of a new urban identity.

This book explores how Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants helped to create the new porteño strain of the Argentine national identity while maintaining their ethnic identity.⁶ The urban national identity emerged as a counterpoint to traditional rural conceptions of Argentina in the late nineteenth century, with the expansion of Buenos Aires and continued population growth due to immigration. This porteño national identity, though still in its early phases during the early twentieth century, included elements of immigrant cultures as well as a focus on modernity and progress based on models from the United States and Europe. Jews, like other immigrants, embraced this national identity while keeping their ethnic identity—they spoke and produced new literary works in their native Yiddish and continued Jewish cultural traditions brought from Europe, from foodways to holidays.

In addition to the interplay of national and ethnic identities, this work illuminates the importance of gender roles, generation, and class while exploring the relationships between Jews and non-Jews. Jewish life in Buenos Aires was diverse and included men, women, and children of various ages with varying lengths of residence in Argentina. Most of them were working class, though some did rise to become middle-class professionals. Some Jews founded or 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 we can see how individuals articulated their multiple identities as well as how those identities formed and overlapped.

Argentine National Identities

Buenos Aires is central to the creation of the modern Argentine nation.⁷ As Adriana Bergero writes, To speak of modern Argentina is to speak, above all, of Buenos Aires.⁸ Since the late nineteenth century the history of the nation, and of Buenos Aires in particular, has been inextricably tied to immigrants.⁹ With the arrival of these immigrants Argentina was transformed from a primarily rural and agricultural nation with a small port capital to a state centered on its growing metropolis, creating a new strain of the national identity. Studying Jewish immigrants in this period helps illuminate a multilayered story—the ascendance of a city, the cultural integration of immigrants, and the creation of a new national narrative.

To be part of the Argentine nation, as defined from its largest city, meant accepting growing ethnic diversity and working toward making Buenos Aires a modern city. The urban identity also included a growing middle class, culled from both native Argentines and different immigrant groups. Yet the shape of the porteño identity was only emerging in the first decades of the twentieth century. "In Argentina, the turn of the century was a time of reinventing old traditions like the heroic gaucho and creating new ones such as the steamy tango—perplexingly parallel yet divergent responses to the local experience of modernity."¹⁰

During the nineteenth century notions of Argentine identity were based around the rural areas, a population of white landowners and mixed-race laborers (including those of European, indigenous, and African heritage), and a stratified socioeconomic system.¹¹ The gaucho was central to these conceptions of the Argentine nation, though usually in a metaphorical capacity, counteracting the influence of working-class immigrants.¹² Regardless of the role of the gaucho, however, to be Argentine in the nineteenth century was to be connected to the land. Most people, both rich and poor, depended on agriculture for their livelihood. The large landowners who ruled Argentina as an oligarchy controlled most of the land, which was tended to by poor laborers. By the 1880s, when it became the federal capital of the state, Buenos Aires had grown in size and importance, and more and more people living there were disengaged from farming and ranching.¹³

National identity markers—which could include language, goods, objects, and popular culture—fostered identification with the nation among diverse groups, both rural and urban.¹⁴ As people drank mate or performed the tango, they identified themselves with the nation and recognized others who did the same as fellow Argentines.¹⁵ Symbols of national identity, like mate, were often disengaged from their original context, but their power lay in the way people perceived their links to either the rural or urban current of the national identity.

For many elites, trying to reconcile the images of the two different Argentinas—one urban, one rural—was fraught with difficulties. Historian Luis Alberto Romero writes that among elites, [t]here was concern about the corruption of a national character that some saw embodied in criollo [rural] society before the immigration tide.¹⁶ Reconciling the modernizing Argentine society that stood apart from the traditional interior was challenging for many elites.¹⁷ They could no longer conceptualize Argentina as a primarily rural country that they controlled (because they owned the land). Yet the urban identity could not become the national identity, because too many Argentines’ experiences were outside of the urban center. As Argentina changed, concepts of the nation were shifting to fit the new realities. Yet national identities often move in different ways as a country changes, and the national identities of the 1920s changed in the 1930s as Argentina’s political and economic system (which seemed stable in the early twentieth century) crashed, ushering in a fifteen-year period of military dominance and an economy that never returned to the pre-1930 levels.

Elite native Argentines often wanted an exclusionary approach to membership in the nation, perceiving it not as a right, but as a privilege that immigrants might earn.¹⁸ Immigrants, on the other hand, often eagerly embraced the national identity, even if they had only recently arrived in Argentina. Historian Lilia Ana Bertoni has pointed out that previous Argentine historiography has tended to make one of two extreme claims: either that Argentine society was xenophobic and unwelcoming to immigrants or that there was little dissention between natives and immigrants.¹⁹ Yet as she rightly notes, the reality for most was somewhere in the middle. Elites and elite rhetoric was often anti-immigrant, yet there was often camaraderie among immigrants of different origins. Many immigrants did face difficulties in Argentina, while others had a relatively easy transition.

Ethnic Identities in the Nation

Jews, like other immigrants, used ethnic identity markers even as they embraced markers of Argentine national identity.²⁰ Symbols of ethnic identity, like those of national identity, might change as time passed (or as people spent more time in Argentina), yet they were vital for the continuance of the ethnic group. All ethnic groups in Buenos Aires used markers of their shared identity to demonstrate their allegiance to their past and their shared cultural values. People added layers of national identity to the ethnic identities they already had, effectively using both ethnic and national markers in their daily lives to identify themselves as both Argentine and ethnic to those around them.

Ethnic identities are held by minority groups and based on origin, family history, and religion.²¹