Monday 6 April 2009
Jewish communal life in Argentina and Brazil at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st: a sociological perspective
Jewish communal life in Argentina and Brazil at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st: a sociological perspective
Yossi Goldstein
Jewish communal life today is founded on a sophisticated organizational system. The link of the Jew as an individual to communal organizations depends both on the individual’s sense of belonging and on the services this system offers which could satisfy the individual’s needs —be they educational, cultural, or social welfare. How are communal institutions facing these needs in a postmodern world? How can it be assured that the interweaving of the different communal institutions gives way to the establishment of an organized community and, as such, justifies the use of the concept kehila (voluntary community)? How can this system confront the new tendencies of an individualized and atomized world, on the one hand, and a globalized world on the other hand? Is it possible to preserve a communal framework without having a collective identity that is vibrant and relevant? These are some of the questions that ought to guide us when trying to analyze Jewish communal life in the 21st century. The key to advancement in this direction is not only to reformulate the concept of kehila in a globalized world, but also to accelerate the development of comparative research among Jewish communities and institutions within cities and countries, regions and continents (Davis, 1963; Goldstein, 2005).
The wide and comprehensive field of research that has grown in the past few years in Jewish communal life in the United States allows us to raise some comparative questions. One important question in this respect is whether the Jewish North American model serves as an archetype for understanding the community structure of the Jews in a globalized and multi-cultural world. The position expressed here is that we have to advance the development of comparative studies in order to better understand the elements of Jewish communal life in the 21st century, taking into consideration the relevant contributions of Jewish North American researchers as well as Israeli researchers in this field.
The comparative approach within the research of Latin American Jewry
Even though the comparative approach has been central in interdisciplinary research revolving around the field of contemporary Jewry, much of the existing research on South America has not adopted this approach.
The pioneering work of Moshe Davis in Jerusalem during the fifties and the sixties established the foundation for comparative study among Jewish communities, applying North American Judaism as the archetype or comparison model. Davis was the first researcher to include this comparison in studying Argentine Jewry by analyzing three Jewish centers in the Western Hemisphere: the United States, Canada and Argentina.[1] Davis’ goal was to “outline, by means of comparison, some disparate and common elements in the three main Jewish centers in the Western Hemisphere,” emphasizing the organizational aspects as well as the study of representative institutions (Davis, 1963: 4-26).
Another center of comparative research of Latin American Judaism was developed at the University of Tel Aviv during the seventies, as manifested in the research of Schers[2] and Singer (1977). This work was carried out at the Horowitz Institute within the framework of a research project on Jewish communities in Latin America, spearheaded by Schers. In this research, both external and internal factors that influenced the Jewish communities were studied, including their interaction and impact on the preservation of a particular collective identity within the context of nationalistic as well as assimilationist settings.
In 1983, Daniel J. Elazar, together with Peter Medding, published a systematic study of Argentine, Australian and South African Judaism in the book Jewish communities in frontier societies. Its political-organizational approach toward the Jewish communities brought forth fruitful comparative research which was clearly delineated in the book People and polity: the organizational dynamics of world Jewry (1989). In this work Elazar adopted a comparative approach in examining Jewish centers in Argentina and Brazil (pp. 262-286). Elazar highlights that “Latin America is not like the United States,” due to the very different general and historical contexts. Moreover, as far as patterns of Jewish identification are concerned, he describes a condition of being “in limbo” due to the absence of a deep feeling of belongingness and integration of the younger generations. This generation, he argues, is focused on a search for wealth, businesses and sports, with a proliferation of sports organizations that now play a central role in Jewish life (p. 262). Also, Elazar emphasizes the presence of Israel, the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization in a manner similar to Elkin who considers Zionism as the “religion of the Latin American Jews” (p.263). Today, these assertions deserve a thorough reconsideration given the new tendencies in Jewish Latin American studies.
Haim Avni continues the approach established by Davis at the Institute of Contemporary Judaism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has published at least fifteen papers bringing forth a global and comparative vision of Latin American Jewry, even though his principal research focuses on Argentina. Avni’s (1988, 1993, 1999) comparative perspective is an attempt to define and clarify the most relevant subjects or dilemmas of the Jewish presence, such as its legitimacy from a greater society’s perspective, the ethnic and cultural diversity, and the dependency on international Jewish organizations. In his comparative work during the 1990s, Avni stressed that it is still important to investigate “the intensity of Jewish public life” (1993: 13); the limits of the right to be different by comparing the Jews to other ethnic and religious minorities; the achievements of Jewish voluntarism; and “the role played by the State of Israel in organized Jewish life in Latin America for the last fifty years” (1999: 30f). Avni was undoubtedly the precursor and promoter of comparative research among Jewish communities in Latin America, an endeavor he transmitted to his students and other academicians (Ben Dror, 1998; Bejarano, 2005 and Goldstein, 2003, 2005).
Judith L. Elkin in her classic book Jews of Latin American Republics (1980, updated edition 1998) together with her compilation with Gilbert Merkx, The Jewish presence in Latin-America (1987), attempts to show a global as well as a continental vision, in which emphasis is placed on a systematic comparison between United States Jewry, defined as ‘the North’, and Latin American Judaism Jewry, defined as ‘the South’, together with an analysis of the evolution of the Jewish communities on the continent in general (Elkin, 1980’s edition: 238-253; 1998’s edition: 215-229). Elkin stresses the external factors influencing these different forms of Judaism, such as the Hispanic legacy with its enormous Catholic and medieval weight. At the absorption level, Jewish immigrants were not capable of integrating themselves politically, only culturally. Their loyalty was permanently questioned, and the Catholic majority never really abandoned their perception of the Jews as foreigners. Low political representation and a certain vulnerability in their political life, which was manifested in a lack of ‘civic assimilation’, can be considered consequences of the above mentioned conditions. Essentially, according to Elkin, Latin American Jews are “history’s orphans” (Elkin, 1998’s edition: 218 and 228f).
It is worth mentioning that Elkin did not modify her analysis even after the very important transformations of the nineties. This approach was stressed again in the revised edition of her book published in 1998. Her vision applied specifically to Spanish speaking countries. In the case of Brazil, there is no systematic analysis. Elkin claims that although an expanding market economy exists there, the civic assimilation of the Jews is in its initial stages and therefore still very far from the United States model. (Elkin, 1998’s edition: 222 f.; 228).
Following this line of analysis, we suggest the application of a theoretical sociological model bolstered by a comparative methodology within the context of communal life in Argentina and Brazil, two countries deeply affected by the processes of globalization since the end of the 1980s. To accomplish this research goal, it is important to maintain a comparative perspective regarding the research developed in this field in the United States. Our study will encompass three main areas:
Communal work and planning
Jewish leadership
Jewish continuity and communal crisis
Communal work and planning
Sociological research has contributed enormously to the diagnosis of problems and to locating the needs of communal life. The field of communal work requires a connection between theory and practice, between analytical study and planning, oriented to the implementation of change. Evaluation and planning are essential tools in this discipline. In this respect, Ukeles (1991) argued that United States Jewry seems to lack serious resources which can be invested in strategic planning as a continuous process that may foster the definition and constant review of the institutional mission of the community (p.171).
To understand the phenomenon of community, it is necessary to study the individual and his or her surroundings, both geographically and culturally. It is also important to incorporate ‘diagnostic tools’ that assist in community planning. A concrete example of this is the creation of the Center of Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University, founded in 1978 by the sociologist Marshall Sklare. From its inception, this center integrated a theoretical orientation together with practical goals, working together with Jewish federations to develop empirical studies about Jewish life in the United States. The central message brought forth by this conception is that Jewish life is going through profound changes and the key to satisfying new needs and offering new community services is the planning inspired by a long term vision of the future (Sternberg, Tobin and Fishman, 1991). The departure point of this research is the acknowledgement of a profound dynamism in Jewish communal life and a permanent need to face the changes that have been prevalent since the 1990's (ibid: XI).
A holistic approach to the phenomenon of a voluntary Jewish community in a postmodern age calls for an analysis of the potential for renovation and reconstruction of communal organizations. Thus, it is imperative to move beyond the old conceptions of uniform and homogeneous communities, what in a previous paper I labeled an anachronistic usage of the concept of kehila (Goldstein, 2005: 46-47). A socio-anthropological vision must begin from the perspective of the Jewish individual, his needs, and the concentric circles that surround him. Even for Daniel Elazar, the concept of ‘the American Jewish Community’ is not something obvious, but rather a descriptive instrument whose purpose is to analyze this phenomenon from a “neutral and practical” point of view. His conclusion leads to the need to understand this Jewish community as a “mosaic” or a “multi-dimensional matrix of institutions and organizations” (Elazar, 1995: XIII and 5).
The great challenge in this age of globalization is to face the need for permanent communal renewal and reconstruction, thereby satisfying the needs of the Jewish individual to belong and maintaining the symbolic significance. This challenge constitutes the central axis of the approach offered by Jonathan Woocher, who ten years ago developed a unified theory in the field of Jewish continuity. Any debate about assimilation or dissolution of Jewish identities must include a social and cultural context of community building. The open and multicultural world in which most Jews live today also calls for pluralistic institutions. As an example, Woocher suggests that the Jewish synagogue must renew itself if it desires to be preserved as a central agent in Jewish life in the United States. The main objective ought to be the construction of an institutional inter-community network that would guarantee synergy and would enable cooperation without the obliteration of particular identities, or the specific vision of each component of this communal mosaic (Woocher, 1995: 38-48).
Within this context, it may be worth considering reapplying Elazar’s model, including his comparative analysis of the Jews in Argentina and Brazil. When analyzing the characteristics of the ‘Jewish Community in Argentina’, Elazar suggests focusing on the following spheres: 1) the communal welfare sphere; 2) the defense sphere and external relations; 3) the Israel sphere and the edah (worldwide organized Judaism); 4) the congregational-religious sphere and 5) the educational-cultural sphere.
This analytic scheme has not been applied to Brazilian Jewry, which is presented in a descriptive and superficial manner. The most valid conclusion would be one that emphasizes the weakness of the communal public sphere in Brazil, given the deep integration with the national culture. This weakness of the communal sphere is the reason Jewish activities are concentrated in the private sphere or at the sport clubs which have gained importance. However, the final conclusion indicates that both Brazilian and Argentine Judaism depend on an external “infusion of energy” which comes from Israel through the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency, “sinking slowly in a ‘protectorate status’” within the context of the edah (Elazar, 1989: 284)
The research regarding Brazilian and Argentine Jewish Communal life published in the last few years emphasizes the relevance of taking into account the political, economic, social and cultural contexts upon which Jewish life developed. In this sense, the differences between Brazil and Argentina are enormous. In Brazil, Jews demonstrate the imprints of an open society (of relatively more tolerance) with a view more oriented towards the future, lacking a collective historic memory which legitimizes mixed race breeding and ethnic diversity (Sorj, 1997). Bernardo Sorj even refers to a “cultural colonialism” due to the enormous Israeli and U.S. influence, whose derived consequence is “terrible intellectual poverty.” In Argentina, on the other hand, since the 1990s Jews have lived in the shadow of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attacks, which even now, in pluralistic and democratic times, generate an existential sense of insecurity. The cyclical recurrence of an economic crisis together with the political instability secure the bond Argentine Jews feel with the State of Israel and yet, at the same time, explain the development of a collective awareness with strong ties to the memory of the Holocaust and to the chain of anti-Semitic instances in the history of the country.
By and large, Judaism in Brazil is closer to the pluralistic model than in Argentina. Still, research in this area is lacking and its influence at the level of community politics is practically null. There is also a lack of publications that provide institutionalized scenarios for public thought and communal debate. The high level publications, such as Raíces or Megamot in Argentina, disappeared some time ago. In both countries, the newspaper remains the only forum for discussion and reflection, such as Tribuna Judaíca or Semana Judaíca in San Pablo, the culture magazine Judaíca or the bi-monthly O Hebreu.
A recent study that sheds light on some of the processes within the Jewish community was carried out by Mara Topel regarding the Teshuva movement in the city of São Paulo. Topel analyzes the impact of globalization on the Jewish community of São Paulo together with the reaction to it of orthodox groups such as Chabad. This group was able to capitalize on the new needs of the community, i.e. the search for absolute values, spirituality and a sense of belonging linked to the creation of a new sense of the Jewish community in a postmodern context. What drives this process is the need felt by many Jewish individuals to ‘feel at home’ in the community, sharing values that are considered transcendental in their individual lives (Topel, 2005: 34-41; 275-294).
The physical space of communal life in South America is very different from the congregational model in United States, where the community gathers and constitutes itself around the synagogue. In Argentina and Brazil, the geographic space of Jewish life is decentralized and characterized by dissolution, or in other words a sporadic belonging, sometimes circumstantial. Even the Jewish Communal School, an established space in the past, has been weakening since the 1990s. In great measure, the school has failed to be a center of Jewish communal life, just as the attempts of the conservative movements (Masortí) have failed. Even given the premise that the movement was able to establish a legitimate non-orthodox setting around the synagogue, membership in these communities is often circumstantial and fulfills only specific ritual functions. Membership hardly has a qualitative impact on the members’ Jewish identity. Yet, the appearance and growth of the Conservative movement in both Argentina and Brazil has pointed to a meaningful process. Unfortunately, researchers have not focused on the role of the Conservative movement as one of the axes of community building, nor has there been much research on the attempt to try to synthesize tendencies that arrive both from the United States and Israel.
The debate over the past few years (an almost clandestine one) is about the functionality of Hebrew and the number of hours assigned to its teaching as a mandatory subject. This leads to a clear conclusion: Hebrew has been delegated as the national language that forges identity and transmits culture. The Brazilian model, in which Hebrew is disappearing in high schools, is slowly being implemented in Argentina with the ORT school model (5-6 weekly hours of Judaic studies, with 1 to 2 weekly hours of Hebrew language), or with the new private Jewish school model such as Arlene Fern or Beth (Judaism in English). Hebrew language instruction was also reduced at the Renascensa School in São Paulo, Brazil.
It can be argued that Jewish communal life in Argentina has taken huge strides towards the Judeo-Brazilian integration model, which is not only integration into society in general, but also integration into the global village. Part of this shift is tied to the image that young parents have of a globalized economy which requires technical training as well as languages oriented towards the United States and the so-called first world.
Argentinean Jewry has a long tradition of centralism in dealing with community issues, educational policies, and key subjects for Jewish continuity. Since 1957, when the Central Educational Committee was established, until the 1990s, it fulfilled an active role in the creation and supervision of curricula, training of teachers, organizing of trips to Israel, and the implementation of the Hebrew language as the central feature of the Jewish school. In the early 1990s, this institution demonstrated signs of decadence, loss of authority, and impotence facing the impact of the government economic policy. Towards the end of 1992, a committee of strategic planning was established, advised by the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and greatly financed by Israel’s educational funds (the Pincus Fund and Keren Meshutefet). This process, which I researched a few years ago (Goldstein, 2001), mobilized the community’s establishment. It generated resources for change and promoted innovative educational projects with the goal of improving the Jewish educational system. Yet, these changes were not institutionalized. Moreover, they did not generate the building of a stable yet dynamic community that could overcome the symptoms of dissolution, such as the disappearance of the concept of a Jewish school network.
There is no doubt that the bombing on July 18th 1994, which killed 85 people and destroyed the main building where most of the Jewish institutions were located in Buenos Aires, became a catalyzing agent in this process. The tragedy accelerated the dissolutionist tendencies and accentuated the symptoms of the community crisis. It is not by chance that the bomb exacerbated the dependency of the community’s leadership on external factors, such as Israel and the United States.
The Joint Distribution Committee, an agency for assistance and philanthropy with its epicenter in the United States, was an important element in the projection of a communal model imported from the North. Towards the end of the eighties, this agency supported and financed publications aimed to promote long term planning and the communal vision, solidifying the role of professional Jews in building communal continuity. An example of this was the magazine Megamot, published in conjunction with AMIA —Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association)— and the Association of Professionals in the Jewish Community. The fact that these initiatives were short lived demonstrates the structural weakness of this model of communal life.
Another example of it is the publication of Communal Space written by the psychologist and thinker Janan Nudel (1989) and supported by the JDC. In this book, Nudel analyzed underlying trends within the institutional communal activities and the problematic relations — sometimes pathological— among the principal actors, especially between the professional leadership and the lay people. The key for understanding this problem lies within the Jewish family, which has progressively been giving up its characteristic Jewish values. His thesis asserts that “the Jews search in the community what they lost outside of it, and outside the community for new things” (p. 24).
The JDC had a significant role in the planning and promotion of communal change. Its publication Contacto served as the basis for the dissemination of projects and ideas of change, as well as for the short and long term planning needs.
The following exemplify this phenomenon:
The promotion of strategic alliances as alternatives for communal development: In May 1995, Contacto published three different approaches related to this subject, and not solely from the perspective of the economic crisis which led to this unification.[3] The public debate, as explained above, constitutes an indispensable link in the development of public reflexive thought as well as for the implementation of structural changes. It is not coincidental that in December 1995, in its 5th issue, the magazine published an article that analyzed the fusion or union between Amos High School of Hebraica and Wolfsohn4. This union was initially very successful, but eventually failed just like the model of the fusion of social/sports club Hebraica with Hacoaj, which had also been promoted and financed by the JDC.
The study of the phenomenon of the ‘new Jewish poverty’. In the mid 1990s, the JDC promoted research on this subject, whose results were published in the magazine Contacto at the end of 1995 and were discussed in a book by sociologists Kessler and Golbert (1995: 12f). The treatment of Jewish poverty ever since and the structuring of unified assistance for the needy sectors, which rose to about 20% of the Jewish population after the socio-economic crisis of December 2001, was carried out through support networks, thanks to a strengthening of the role of tzedakah (charity giving) as a central community entity. This undoubtedly constituted a positive example of successful community building, even though it was a contingent and temporary response to the symptoms of crisis and dissolution
For many years, the socio-sport clubs constituted the principal meeting space for Jews, reflecting the prevailing role of the social over the educational and cultural dimensions of communal life. Nowadays these spaces are still playing an active role in Jewish communal life, albeit to a lesser extent, as a result of the economic crisis and the growing importance given to social integration. A comparison between the North American Jewish community center and the socio-sport clubs constitute examples of two different Jewish communal models. Over the past few decades, Jews from Argentina and Brazil have strengthened their ties with North American Jewry and at the same time suffered from the impact of neo-liberal economic policies (with all its implications in the institutional context). These processes strengthened Jewish communal life in the United States, while in the context of the South American Jewish communities, they operated as weakening forces which are understood in post-modern terms of construction and dissolution in the specific cases of Brazil and Argentina. The phenomenon of Jewish poverty in wide sectors of the Jewish middle class is a central aspect of Bernardo Kliksberg’s research. Kliksberg himself is an educator, thinker and consultant of the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as an important personality in Argentine Judaism. He criticized the lack of a strategic agenda in Latin American Judaism and the absence of a clear debate about the need to “formulate and develop community policies in an uncertain general and Jewish world in which the region, while sharing the global uncertainty, has a greater level of it” (Kliksberg, 1993: 24). According to Kliksberg, the continent is undergoing three important developments: 1) democratization; 2) a deep economic crisis and 3) an exponential growth of the social problem, i.e. poverty (p. 29). The latter is generating an increase in the number of impoverished Jews, manifested on a great scale after the political crisis in Argentina in December 2001.
In 2002, Kliksberg put forth the hypothesis that 25% of Jews in Argentina might be living in a state of structural poverty, a phenomenon that would be even more intense in Brazil and around which communal planning in both nations has been designed (Kliksberg, 2002: 9f).
Due to its cultural and social peculiarities, Brazil, as compared to Argentina, is a continent unto itself. Centralist trends are not strongly manifested on the Jewish communal level in this country as its federal structure, as well as the distribution of the Jewish population across the different states —mainly in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul— impedes any attempt to coordinate communal life at the national level. Historic rivalries among the states also explain the lack of national coordination, except for the political activities undertaken by CONIB (Israelite Brazilian National Confederation). Even at the level of large cities and states, the impotence of the Jewish Federations in handling educational policy is noticeable. An enormous gap between the political discourse and the reality of multiple identities and cultures which characterize Brazilian Jewry is evident.
Jewish Leadership
The 1995 report from the Wexner Foundation regarding “Jewish professional leadership today,” as well as other research carried out in the 1990s, provides us with a glimpse into the great dynamism of communal life in the United States (Cohen, Sarna and Fishman, 1995). In general, this research emphasizes the importance of training and developing a new type of leadership, both professional as well as voluntary, as part of global strategic planning. Reisman, for example, considers the training of professional leadership in light of the current needs of communal life pointing out how young generations of North American Jews (third or fourth generation) have easily integrated into their social setting and are seeking a revolutionary change toward a more meaningful communal life. This generation requires a Jewish leader who is both a statesman and an expert (Reisman, 1991: 233-235). The Wexner Foundation report highlights that the reasons for the new generation of professional communal leaders to take this path are not the influence of the Jewish federation, the Jewish school or the synagogue, but rather their personal experiences, family influence or the model role of current leaders (Sarna, 1995: 46).
The new profile of communal life is projected in publications such as the Journal of Jewish Communal Services, edited by the Jewish Communal Service Association (JCSA), an organization that has been active for over a hundred years. In its pages we find a calling for the preservation of the communal service professional and its role in developing a new vision to face the new millennium (Kleinman, 1999; Reisman, 1992). The Jewish leader in a postmodern globalized age must strive to become a unifying element and a generator of common symbolic meaning. For this to occur, leaders must have a clear understanding of the institutional context and the culture of the organization especially when trying to improve Jewish education5 and work towards promoting unity and a sense of belonging. Institutional change is considered impossible to implement without this new type of both lay and professional leadership (Shevitz, 1995: 177-178). Some argue that this new type of leadership should be a “shared leadership”, i.e. leadership based more on team work and less on the charismatic individual (Samuels and Aron, 1999: 25).
One of the central features of community life in Latin America is precisely the lack of strong lay leadership. The old askan (lay person leader) leadership model, justified by early 20th century ideology —which arose from the political parties that are in decay today, such as Avoda and Likud— is gradually disappearing, and no clear continuity with a new vision reflecting the new reality is evident yet. Moreover, the attempt by the JDC to create a setting for the training of new leaders was not very successful among the lay sectors, though it did have a significant impact on the formation of professionals working in the Jewish community. The evolution of Leatid as an entity created by the JDC towards this ends points to the ambivalence of lay leadership.
However, problems within the communal leadership are not easily identifiable as not much research has been devoted to analyzing such issues in Latin America, especially when contrasted with the abundance of literature on Jewish communal leadership in the United States. As an attempt to fill this void, an initiative of the JDC was noted in the aforementioned book by the Argentine psychologist Janan Nudel. For him, “communal leadership could be defined as authoritarianism represented by the figure of the father” and is characterized by the use of the “messianic fantasy” and the dismissal of the professional who is considered a “mercenary” (Nudel, 1989: 37-38). According to this analysis, the Jewish leadership in Argentina is not a dynamic agent for change, but rather part of “the machinery of immobility” (p. 39).
According to Kliksberg (1993: 25), Jewish communal leadership in Latin America operates in a pretty restricted background, ignoring the challenges of an uncertain world. In other words, the lay leadership lacks vision of the regional and international context in which Jewish communities develop. At the same time, Schers (1987: 290) defined the problem of Jewish leadership in Latin America as a function of the lack of positive cultural identification with Judaism, which translates into a problem of identity and cultural dearth.
The rise of alternative leadership, through the activism of socio-sport clubs or within the Conservative (Masorti) movement, did not lead to a stabilization of the institutional settings. On the contrary, in the end, the alternative leadership was canalized through Jewish bankers like Ruben Beraja or Sergio Spolsky. The collapse of their respective banks in 1998 (Mayo and Patricios), generated a chaotic fall in Jewish communal life which resulted in financial debts and a bad reputation that stained the Jewish leadership as a whole. This model was not repeated in Brazil where philanthropic bankers such as the Safra family continue to give significant amounts of money to Jewish institutions, without intervening in the internal political arena or establishing their own power base. Communal leadership is today comprised of rabbis from the different movements6 and constitutes a model whose success is worth studying more in depth and on a comparative level.
Within the Judeo-Argentine context, the symptoms of instability were found to be caused by internal dissolution. Responsibility for the problems was attributed to the fragmentation and the damage of the moral reputation of its leadership. This internal struggle was identified by two prestigious newspaper reporters as the clearest symptom of the communal crisis in Argentina towards the end of the 20th century (Melamed, 2004: 14f; 235-240; Chab, 2001: 17, 264-267).7 Regarding this subject, the historian Efraim Zadoff proposed that “the Jewish leadership has failed in articulating Jewish interests, a fact that may be seen as a symptom of a new stage in the changing trends of incorporation and integration of Argentine Jews” (2000: 38).
Jewish continuity and communal crisis
The concept of continuity has been a central axis in Jewish communal life in the United States since the National Community Census of 1990. The urgent problems that the Jewish community confronted were decadence in the organized community, demographic decline and crisis in leadership. Several researchers attempted to develop a ‘strategic vision for the Jewish Community’, starting by addressing issues of assimilation and acculturation. Woocher (1995) suggested the rebuilding of communities and cultures as social realities, both vital and cognitive, that will nourish and preserve strong Jewish identities. In a postmodern world, every community must begin from the individual and his or her needs. This is the main principle which Jewish continuity can be built upon. The community, above all, must offer a sense of meaning and hospitality (p. 24).
Sarna argues that North American Judaism is afflicted by a crisis of confidence which manifests itself in four challenges: 1) the preservation of Jewish continuity; 2) the changing nature of Jewish Identity; 3) the threat of a lack of sense of hospitality and belonging felt by North American Jews and 4) the dissolution with the sense of unity and the strong links towards the State of Israel. These challenges, according to Sarna, are symptoms of crisis, yet at the same time, they offer the potential for renovation and positive change.
More recent research, such as the book by Cohen and Eisen (2000), emphasizes this conclusion. The proposed new guidelines of a community life rest more and more on the archetype of a ‘sovereign Jew’, whose identity is complex and whose connection stems from his or her subjective needs and symbolic meanings. In 2003, Cohen published an interesting work on research regarding Jewish identity in the U.S that appeared in a volume that deals with the issue defined in its title: Continuity, commitment and survival (Encel and Stein, 2003). The author emphasizes the shift in focus from integrationism to survivalism, a shift which took hold in 1967. Since the end of the 1980s, a middle ground has prevailed which emphasizes continuity or authenticity, and new forms of Jewish identity based on the gathering of data from empirical research. Jewish identity in the United States, even if grounded in cultural significances which defined it as belonging to the religious and ritualistic dimension, also adopted ethnic nuances. Without the ethnic dimension, it is hard to understand the sense of belonging and inclusion within the communal framework. This includes the shared vision of having common ancestry, sharing a culture and historic milestones as well as a shared destiny (Cohen, 2003: 13). It is interesting to note that empirical research in the U.S. shows a decline in ethnic expressions of Judaism, such as endogamy, affiliation to Jewish institutions, level of philanthropy and enthusiasm towards Israel. But at the same time, the level of collective achievement and commitment from the Jewish community elite (lay people, donors and practicing Jews) points to great advances that can be measured both quantitatively and qualitatively.
In other words, North American researchers such as Moshe Davis, an Israeli born in the United States, identify the problems in the Jewish community as a ‘crisis of Jewish identity’, which is expressed through ‘detachment’ manifested in mixed marriages and in the ideology of assimilation and acculturation. To Davis, this problem is “common to the Jews of Canada, the United States and Argentina and represents ‘the crisis of identification’ which is affecting many Jews” (Davis, 1963, citing the Spanish translation (1967): 18-27, citation on p. 19).
Diego Melamed sees the 1990s as a “period of convulsions” marked by the collapse “in buildings, interests and values” of the Jewish community in Argentina, which, at the end of the millennium, was left “fractured and betrayed by its representatives” (2000: 13-15).
According to the World Jewish Congress, the critical condition of the Jews in Argentina since 1998 has been epitomized by two fundamental milestones: the attack against the Amia-Daia in July 1994, and the collapse of the Mayo and Patricios banks in 1998. The official dispatch of this situation is described as “From crisis to crisis” (World Jewish Congress, 1998: 1-4). Thus ‘community in distress’ appears to be a more and more appropriate label to characterize the situation of Argentine Jewry. Still, this very expression was adopted by Kliksberg (2002) to describe not only the condition of Argentine Jews, declaring it “a Jewish community in danger”, but also the condition of all Latin America. According to Kliksberg the most important symptom of this structural crisis is the general impoverishment of the middle class and the resurgence of a “dramatic social scheme” of “a new Jewish poverty” in particular (pp. 5-15).
Several researchers of Argentine Jewry widely use the concept of community crisis to characterize the internal structural situation towards the end of the last century and the beginning of this one. The crisis is mainly associated with the financial and economic condition which arose in 1998 and climaxed in 2002 (Zadoff, 2000: 35, 141; Schenkolewski-Kroll, 2004: 194f). Avni stresses the relationship between this community crisis and the national and social context of the country, especially towards the year 2002. Yet he defines it as “an immanent crisis in the last decade of the 20th century” (Avni, 2005: 450-453). Almost all of these authors link this crisis to the weakened structure of communal leadership, as well as its fragmentation. Nonetheless, the journalist Silvia Chab was the only one who took on the concept of crisis as a central axis in her investigative reporting book. She defines this crisis as “internal diasporization”, founded in the “crisis of a functioning institutionalized and centralized system, and in the sense that the term community ever had” (2001: 17; 261)
Judith Elkin opted to portray the condition of Argentine Jewry as a “cataclysm”, a “bankruptcy of institutions”, a sense of “vulnerability and isolation”, within the national context of a “chaotic economy”, “government corruption” and “disaster” (2003: 149f). Without using the concept of crisis, Elkin presents a pessimistic analysis regarding the future of Argentine Jewry, one of “disintegration” and disorientation regarding “strategies for Jewish survival” with the failure of the Secular-Zionist model of Jewish continuity. The author concludes that the destruction of the national economy which took place at the beginning of this millennium could inflict a “mortal blow to the Jewish community in Argentina” (pp. 165-170).
The concept of communal crisis is rarely applied to Brazilian Judaism, which some perceive as a “great community whose members are now full participants in every aspect of the social, political and cultural life of the country” (Falbel, 2001: 16). Thus, it is not surprising that the success of social integration may be seen as a double edged sword, and that the main concern is the fleeting Jewish identity of its youth. The main problem is, then, that of Jewish continuity due to the “centrifugal attraction of an open society” (pp. 24-27). On the other hand, the sociologist Bernardo Sorj defines Brazil as the “country of the future”, or a “country with no memory.” A society that rejects the past or undervalues it, a fact that in a way facilitates the integration of Jews as immigrants, yet demands a great price at the organizational level of the Jewish community. According to Sorj, this dilemma brought about by modernity endangers the socialization mechanisms of organized Jewish life (1997: 17, 19).
This sociological approach is clearly adopted by Monica Grin (1997) in her study about the crisis of modern Judaism in the Brazilian context. By undertaking a political-institutional analysis of the Israelite Federation in Rio de Janeiro, Grin stresses the permanent struggle among two models of kehila: the centralizing one, which is based on European Jewish life until the Second World War, and the modernizing one, which promoted the pluralistic approach among the communal frameworks (pp. 103-107). In other words, the debate around the crisis of Brazilian Jewry is presented according to the paradigm of the research agenda of North American and Western Judaism. The framework is that of a dilemma of Jewish identity and social disintegration, and not that of a socio-economic problem, or a physical existential threat.
Conclusions
In the light of the theoretical analysis discussed, it is possible to conclude that the challenges of communal life in the 21st century demand an approach encompassing the three axes that we have presented. A circular flux among these axes is the key in understanding the symptoms of the communal crisis. The lack of connection between strategic planning, the capability to build and renew communal institutions according to the new identities and needs of the Jewish individual, and a professional and lay leadership with new visions may together explain the existence of a crisis with destructive potential that could threaten the Jewish continuity in a globalized, multi-cultural world.
The comparison between Jewry in United States and in South America shows not only three different models of Jewish continuity, but it also highlights the importance of deepening the systematic comparative research in Jewish communal life in Latin America. An interdisciplinary vision that incorporates sociological and anthropological aspects of the communal organization and new schemes of Jewish identity is necessary to better understand the answers of the Jewish world to the impact of globalization. In this sense, the systematic comparison between Jewish communal life in Argentina and Brazil can greatly contribute to the understanding of this phenomenon on an international level.
[1] The original English version of this pioneering work was presented in the “Third World Congress of Jewish Studies” which took place at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1961.
[2] See also Schers’ (1987) article, the result of his lecture at the LAJSA (Latin American Jewish Studies Association) congress which took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in March, 1984.
[3] Contacto (May 1995), Year 3, N° 4, Buenos Aires: Joint Distribution Committee. See dossier “Strategic Alliances”, approaches from J. Nudel, B. Blejmar and J. Schulman, pp. 11-20
4 Contacto (December 1995), Year 3, N° 5, Buenos Aires: American Joint Distribution Committee, pp. 8-9
5 See the N° 11 of Agenda: Jewish Education (Spring 1999), specifically the articles written by Green and Flexner.
6 Such as Rabbi Tzvi Grumblatt from Chabad in Argentina, Rabbi Daniel Goldman from the Bet El community in Buenos Aires, Rabbi Sergio Bergman from the Israelite Congregation and the Judaic Foundation, Rabbi Milton Bonder from the Conservative Movement in Rio de Janeiro, etc.
7 See more about this subject bellow, in the section “Jewish continuity and communal crisis”.
Yossi Goldstein
Jewish communal life today is founded on a sophisticated organizational system. The link of the Jew as an individual to communal organizations depends both on the individual’s sense of belonging and on the services this system offers which could satisfy the individual’s needs —be they educational, cultural, or social welfare. How are communal institutions facing these needs in a postmodern world? How can it be assured that the interweaving of the different communal institutions gives way to the establishment of an organized community and, as such, justifies the use of the concept kehila (voluntary community)? How can this system confront the new tendencies of an individualized and atomized world, on the one hand, and a globalized world on the other hand? Is it possible to preserve a communal framework without having a collective identity that is vibrant and relevant? These are some of the questions that ought to guide us when trying to analyze Jewish communal life in the 21st century. The key to advancement in this direction is not only to reformulate the concept of kehila in a globalized world, but also to accelerate the development of comparative research among Jewish communities and institutions within cities and countries, regions and continents (Davis, 1963; Goldstein, 2005).
The wide and comprehensive field of research that has grown in the past few years in Jewish communal life in the United States allows us to raise some comparative questions. One important question in this respect is whether the Jewish North American model serves as an archetype for understanding the community structure of the Jews in a globalized and multi-cultural world. The position expressed here is that we have to advance the development of comparative studies in order to better understand the elements of Jewish communal life in the 21st century, taking into consideration the relevant contributions of Jewish North American researchers as well as Israeli researchers in this field.
The comparative approach within the research of Latin American Jewry
Even though the comparative approach has been central in interdisciplinary research revolving around the field of contemporary Jewry, much of the existing research on South America has not adopted this approach.
The pioneering work of Moshe Davis in Jerusalem during the fifties and the sixties established the foundation for comparative study among Jewish communities, applying North American Judaism as the archetype or comparison model. Davis was the first researcher to include this comparison in studying Argentine Jewry by analyzing three Jewish centers in the Western Hemisphere: the United States, Canada and Argentina.[1] Davis’ goal was to “outline, by means of comparison, some disparate and common elements in the three main Jewish centers in the Western Hemisphere,” emphasizing the organizational aspects as well as the study of representative institutions (Davis, 1963: 4-26).
Another center of comparative research of Latin American Judaism was developed at the University of Tel Aviv during the seventies, as manifested in the research of Schers[2] and Singer (1977). This work was carried out at the Horowitz Institute within the framework of a research project on Jewish communities in Latin America, spearheaded by Schers. In this research, both external and internal factors that influenced the Jewish communities were studied, including their interaction and impact on the preservation of a particular collective identity within the context of nationalistic as well as assimilationist settings.
In 1983, Daniel J. Elazar, together with Peter Medding, published a systematic study of Argentine, Australian and South African Judaism in the book Jewish communities in frontier societies. Its political-organizational approach toward the Jewish communities brought forth fruitful comparative research which was clearly delineated in the book People and polity: the organizational dynamics of world Jewry (1989). In this work Elazar adopted a comparative approach in examining Jewish centers in Argentina and Brazil (pp. 262-286). Elazar highlights that “Latin America is not like the United States,” due to the very different general and historical contexts. Moreover, as far as patterns of Jewish identification are concerned, he describes a condition of being “in limbo” due to the absence of a deep feeling of belongingness and integration of the younger generations. This generation, he argues, is focused on a search for wealth, businesses and sports, with a proliferation of sports organizations that now play a central role in Jewish life (p. 262). Also, Elazar emphasizes the presence of Israel, the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization in a manner similar to Elkin who considers Zionism as the “religion of the Latin American Jews” (p.263). Today, these assertions deserve a thorough reconsideration given the new tendencies in Jewish Latin American studies.
Haim Avni continues the approach established by Davis at the Institute of Contemporary Judaism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has published at least fifteen papers bringing forth a global and comparative vision of Latin American Jewry, even though his principal research focuses on Argentina. Avni’s (1988, 1993, 1999) comparative perspective is an attempt to define and clarify the most relevant subjects or dilemmas of the Jewish presence, such as its legitimacy from a greater society’s perspective, the ethnic and cultural diversity, and the dependency on international Jewish organizations. In his comparative work during the 1990s, Avni stressed that it is still important to investigate “the intensity of Jewish public life” (1993: 13); the limits of the right to be different by comparing the Jews to other ethnic and religious minorities; the achievements of Jewish voluntarism; and “the role played by the State of Israel in organized Jewish life in Latin America for the last fifty years” (1999: 30f). Avni was undoubtedly the precursor and promoter of comparative research among Jewish communities in Latin America, an endeavor he transmitted to his students and other academicians (Ben Dror, 1998; Bejarano, 2005 and Goldstein, 2003, 2005).
Judith L. Elkin in her classic book Jews of Latin American Republics (1980, updated edition 1998) together with her compilation with Gilbert Merkx, The Jewish presence in Latin-America (1987), attempts to show a global as well as a continental vision, in which emphasis is placed on a systematic comparison between United States Jewry, defined as ‘the North’, and Latin American Judaism Jewry, defined as ‘the South’, together with an analysis of the evolution of the Jewish communities on the continent in general (Elkin, 1980’s edition: 238-253; 1998’s edition: 215-229). Elkin stresses the external factors influencing these different forms of Judaism, such as the Hispanic legacy with its enormous Catholic and medieval weight. At the absorption level, Jewish immigrants were not capable of integrating themselves politically, only culturally. Their loyalty was permanently questioned, and the Catholic majority never really abandoned their perception of the Jews as foreigners. Low political representation and a certain vulnerability in their political life, which was manifested in a lack of ‘civic assimilation’, can be considered consequences of the above mentioned conditions. Essentially, according to Elkin, Latin American Jews are “history’s orphans” (Elkin, 1998’s edition: 218 and 228f).
It is worth mentioning that Elkin did not modify her analysis even after the very important transformations of the nineties. This approach was stressed again in the revised edition of her book published in 1998. Her vision applied specifically to Spanish speaking countries. In the case of Brazil, there is no systematic analysis. Elkin claims that although an expanding market economy exists there, the civic assimilation of the Jews is in its initial stages and therefore still very far from the United States model. (Elkin, 1998’s edition: 222 f.; 228).
Following this line of analysis, we suggest the application of a theoretical sociological model bolstered by a comparative methodology within the context of communal life in Argentina and Brazil, two countries deeply affected by the processes of globalization since the end of the 1980s. To accomplish this research goal, it is important to maintain a comparative perspective regarding the research developed in this field in the United States. Our study will encompass three main areas:
Communal work and planning
Jewish leadership
Jewish continuity and communal crisis
Communal work and planning
Sociological research has contributed enormously to the diagnosis of problems and to locating the needs of communal life. The field of communal work requires a connection between theory and practice, between analytical study and planning, oriented to the implementation of change. Evaluation and planning are essential tools in this discipline. In this respect, Ukeles (1991) argued that United States Jewry seems to lack serious resources which can be invested in strategic planning as a continuous process that may foster the definition and constant review of the institutional mission of the community (p.171).
To understand the phenomenon of community, it is necessary to study the individual and his or her surroundings, both geographically and culturally. It is also important to incorporate ‘diagnostic tools’ that assist in community planning. A concrete example of this is the creation of the Center of Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University, founded in 1978 by the sociologist Marshall Sklare. From its inception, this center integrated a theoretical orientation together with practical goals, working together with Jewish federations to develop empirical studies about Jewish life in the United States. The central message brought forth by this conception is that Jewish life is going through profound changes and the key to satisfying new needs and offering new community services is the planning inspired by a long term vision of the future (Sternberg, Tobin and Fishman, 1991). The departure point of this research is the acknowledgement of a profound dynamism in Jewish communal life and a permanent need to face the changes that have been prevalent since the 1990's (ibid: XI).
A holistic approach to the phenomenon of a voluntary Jewish community in a postmodern age calls for an analysis of the potential for renovation and reconstruction of communal organizations. Thus, it is imperative to move beyond the old conceptions of uniform and homogeneous communities, what in a previous paper I labeled an anachronistic usage of the concept of kehila (Goldstein, 2005: 46-47). A socio-anthropological vision must begin from the perspective of the Jewish individual, his needs, and the concentric circles that surround him. Even for Daniel Elazar, the concept of ‘the American Jewish Community’ is not something obvious, but rather a descriptive instrument whose purpose is to analyze this phenomenon from a “neutral and practical” point of view. His conclusion leads to the need to understand this Jewish community as a “mosaic” or a “multi-dimensional matrix of institutions and organizations” (Elazar, 1995: XIII and 5).
The great challenge in this age of globalization is to face the need for permanent communal renewal and reconstruction, thereby satisfying the needs of the Jewish individual to belong and maintaining the symbolic significance. This challenge constitutes the central axis of the approach offered by Jonathan Woocher, who ten years ago developed a unified theory in the field of Jewish continuity. Any debate about assimilation or dissolution of Jewish identities must include a social and cultural context of community building. The open and multicultural world in which most Jews live today also calls for pluralistic institutions. As an example, Woocher suggests that the Jewish synagogue must renew itself if it desires to be preserved as a central agent in Jewish life in the United States. The main objective ought to be the construction of an institutional inter-community network that would guarantee synergy and would enable cooperation without the obliteration of particular identities, or the specific vision of each component of this communal mosaic (Woocher, 1995: 38-48).
Within this context, it may be worth considering reapplying Elazar’s model, including his comparative analysis of the Jews in Argentina and Brazil. When analyzing the characteristics of the ‘Jewish Community in Argentina’, Elazar suggests focusing on the following spheres: 1) the communal welfare sphere; 2) the defense sphere and external relations; 3) the Israel sphere and the edah (worldwide organized Judaism); 4) the congregational-religious sphere and 5) the educational-cultural sphere.
This analytic scheme has not been applied to Brazilian Jewry, which is presented in a descriptive and superficial manner. The most valid conclusion would be one that emphasizes the weakness of the communal public sphere in Brazil, given the deep integration with the national culture. This weakness of the communal sphere is the reason Jewish activities are concentrated in the private sphere or at the sport clubs which have gained importance. However, the final conclusion indicates that both Brazilian and Argentine Judaism depend on an external “infusion of energy” which comes from Israel through the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency, “sinking slowly in a ‘protectorate status’” within the context of the edah (Elazar, 1989: 284)
The research regarding Brazilian and Argentine Jewish Communal life published in the last few years emphasizes the relevance of taking into account the political, economic, social and cultural contexts upon which Jewish life developed. In this sense, the differences between Brazil and Argentina are enormous. In Brazil, Jews demonstrate the imprints of an open society (of relatively more tolerance) with a view more oriented towards the future, lacking a collective historic memory which legitimizes mixed race breeding and ethnic diversity (Sorj, 1997). Bernardo Sorj even refers to a “cultural colonialism” due to the enormous Israeli and U.S. influence, whose derived consequence is “terrible intellectual poverty.” In Argentina, on the other hand, since the 1990s Jews have lived in the shadow of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attacks, which even now, in pluralistic and democratic times, generate an existential sense of insecurity. The cyclical recurrence of an economic crisis together with the political instability secure the bond Argentine Jews feel with the State of Israel and yet, at the same time, explain the development of a collective awareness with strong ties to the memory of the Holocaust and to the chain of anti-Semitic instances in the history of the country.
By and large, Judaism in Brazil is closer to the pluralistic model than in Argentina. Still, research in this area is lacking and its influence at the level of community politics is practically null. There is also a lack of publications that provide institutionalized scenarios for public thought and communal debate. The high level publications, such as Raíces or Megamot in Argentina, disappeared some time ago. In both countries, the newspaper remains the only forum for discussion and reflection, such as Tribuna Judaíca or Semana Judaíca in San Pablo, the culture magazine Judaíca or the bi-monthly O Hebreu.
A recent study that sheds light on some of the processes within the Jewish community was carried out by Mara Topel regarding the Teshuva movement in the city of São Paulo. Topel analyzes the impact of globalization on the Jewish community of São Paulo together with the reaction to it of orthodox groups such as Chabad. This group was able to capitalize on the new needs of the community, i.e. the search for absolute values, spirituality and a sense of belonging linked to the creation of a new sense of the Jewish community in a postmodern context. What drives this process is the need felt by many Jewish individuals to ‘feel at home’ in the community, sharing values that are considered transcendental in their individual lives (Topel, 2005: 34-41; 275-294).
The physical space of communal life in South America is very different from the congregational model in United States, where the community gathers and constitutes itself around the synagogue. In Argentina and Brazil, the geographic space of Jewish life is decentralized and characterized by dissolution, or in other words a sporadic belonging, sometimes circumstantial. Even the Jewish Communal School, an established space in the past, has been weakening since the 1990s. In great measure, the school has failed to be a center of Jewish communal life, just as the attempts of the conservative movements (Masortí) have failed. Even given the premise that the movement was able to establish a legitimate non-orthodox setting around the synagogue, membership in these communities is often circumstantial and fulfills only specific ritual functions. Membership hardly has a qualitative impact on the members’ Jewish identity. Yet, the appearance and growth of the Conservative movement in both Argentina and Brazil has pointed to a meaningful process. Unfortunately, researchers have not focused on the role of the Conservative movement as one of the axes of community building, nor has there been much research on the attempt to try to synthesize tendencies that arrive both from the United States and Israel.
The debate over the past few years (an almost clandestine one) is about the functionality of Hebrew and the number of hours assigned to its teaching as a mandatory subject. This leads to a clear conclusion: Hebrew has been delegated as the national language that forges identity and transmits culture. The Brazilian model, in which Hebrew is disappearing in high schools, is slowly being implemented in Argentina with the ORT school model (5-6 weekly hours of Judaic studies, with 1 to 2 weekly hours of Hebrew language), or with the new private Jewish school model such as Arlene Fern or Beth (Judaism in English). Hebrew language instruction was also reduced at the Renascensa School in São Paulo, Brazil.
It can be argued that Jewish communal life in Argentina has taken huge strides towards the Judeo-Brazilian integration model, which is not only integration into society in general, but also integration into the global village. Part of this shift is tied to the image that young parents have of a globalized economy which requires technical training as well as languages oriented towards the United States and the so-called first world.
Argentinean Jewry has a long tradition of centralism in dealing with community issues, educational policies, and key subjects for Jewish continuity. Since 1957, when the Central Educational Committee was established, until the 1990s, it fulfilled an active role in the creation and supervision of curricula, training of teachers, organizing of trips to Israel, and the implementation of the Hebrew language as the central feature of the Jewish school. In the early 1990s, this institution demonstrated signs of decadence, loss of authority, and impotence facing the impact of the government economic policy. Towards the end of 1992, a committee of strategic planning was established, advised by the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and greatly financed by Israel’s educational funds (the Pincus Fund and Keren Meshutefet). This process, which I researched a few years ago (Goldstein, 2001), mobilized the community’s establishment. It generated resources for change and promoted innovative educational projects with the goal of improving the Jewish educational system. Yet, these changes were not institutionalized. Moreover, they did not generate the building of a stable yet dynamic community that could overcome the symptoms of dissolution, such as the disappearance of the concept of a Jewish school network.
There is no doubt that the bombing on July 18th 1994, which killed 85 people and destroyed the main building where most of the Jewish institutions were located in Buenos Aires, became a catalyzing agent in this process. The tragedy accelerated the dissolutionist tendencies and accentuated the symptoms of the community crisis. It is not by chance that the bomb exacerbated the dependency of the community’s leadership on external factors, such as Israel and the United States.
The Joint Distribution Committee, an agency for assistance and philanthropy with its epicenter in the United States, was an important element in the projection of a communal model imported from the North. Towards the end of the eighties, this agency supported and financed publications aimed to promote long term planning and the communal vision, solidifying the role of professional Jews in building communal continuity. An example of this was the magazine Megamot, published in conjunction with AMIA —Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association)— and the Association of Professionals in the Jewish Community. The fact that these initiatives were short lived demonstrates the structural weakness of this model of communal life.
Another example of it is the publication of Communal Space written by the psychologist and thinker Janan Nudel (1989) and supported by the JDC. In this book, Nudel analyzed underlying trends within the institutional communal activities and the problematic relations — sometimes pathological— among the principal actors, especially between the professional leadership and the lay people. The key for understanding this problem lies within the Jewish family, which has progressively been giving up its characteristic Jewish values. His thesis asserts that “the Jews search in the community what they lost outside of it, and outside the community for new things” (p. 24).
The JDC had a significant role in the planning and promotion of communal change. Its publication Contacto served as the basis for the dissemination of projects and ideas of change, as well as for the short and long term planning needs.
The following exemplify this phenomenon:
The promotion of strategic alliances as alternatives for communal development: In May 1995, Contacto published three different approaches related to this subject, and not solely from the perspective of the economic crisis which led to this unification.[3] The public debate, as explained above, constitutes an indispensable link in the development of public reflexive thought as well as for the implementation of structural changes. It is not coincidental that in December 1995, in its 5th issue, the magazine published an article that analyzed the fusion or union between Amos High School of Hebraica and Wolfsohn4. This union was initially very successful, but eventually failed just like the model of the fusion of social/sports club Hebraica with Hacoaj, which had also been promoted and financed by the JDC.
The study of the phenomenon of the ‘new Jewish poverty’. In the mid 1990s, the JDC promoted research on this subject, whose results were published in the magazine Contacto at the end of 1995 and were discussed in a book by sociologists Kessler and Golbert (1995: 12f). The treatment of Jewish poverty ever since and the structuring of unified assistance for the needy sectors, which rose to about 20% of the Jewish population after the socio-economic crisis of December 2001, was carried out through support networks, thanks to a strengthening of the role of tzedakah (charity giving) as a central community entity. This undoubtedly constituted a positive example of successful community building, even though it was a contingent and temporary response to the symptoms of crisis and dissolution
For many years, the socio-sport clubs constituted the principal meeting space for Jews, reflecting the prevailing role of the social over the educational and cultural dimensions of communal life. Nowadays these spaces are still playing an active role in Jewish communal life, albeit to a lesser extent, as a result of the economic crisis and the growing importance given to social integration. A comparison between the North American Jewish community center and the socio-sport clubs constitute examples of two different Jewish communal models. Over the past few decades, Jews from Argentina and Brazil have strengthened their ties with North American Jewry and at the same time suffered from the impact of neo-liberal economic policies (with all its implications in the institutional context). These processes strengthened Jewish communal life in the United States, while in the context of the South American Jewish communities, they operated as weakening forces which are understood in post-modern terms of construction and dissolution in the specific cases of Brazil and Argentina. The phenomenon of Jewish poverty in wide sectors of the Jewish middle class is a central aspect of Bernardo Kliksberg’s research. Kliksberg himself is an educator, thinker and consultant of the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as an important personality in Argentine Judaism. He criticized the lack of a strategic agenda in Latin American Judaism and the absence of a clear debate about the need to “formulate and develop community policies in an uncertain general and Jewish world in which the region, while sharing the global uncertainty, has a greater level of it” (Kliksberg, 1993: 24). According to Kliksberg, the continent is undergoing three important developments: 1) democratization; 2) a deep economic crisis and 3) an exponential growth of the social problem, i.e. poverty (p. 29). The latter is generating an increase in the number of impoverished Jews, manifested on a great scale after the political crisis in Argentina in December 2001.
In 2002, Kliksberg put forth the hypothesis that 25% of Jews in Argentina might be living in a state of structural poverty, a phenomenon that would be even more intense in Brazil and around which communal planning in both nations has been designed (Kliksberg, 2002: 9f).
Due to its cultural and social peculiarities, Brazil, as compared to Argentina, is a continent unto itself. Centralist trends are not strongly manifested on the Jewish communal level in this country as its federal structure, as well as the distribution of the Jewish population across the different states —mainly in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul— impedes any attempt to coordinate communal life at the national level. Historic rivalries among the states also explain the lack of national coordination, except for the political activities undertaken by CONIB (Israelite Brazilian National Confederation). Even at the level of large cities and states, the impotence of the Jewish Federations in handling educational policy is noticeable. An enormous gap between the political discourse and the reality of multiple identities and cultures which characterize Brazilian Jewry is evident.
Jewish Leadership
The 1995 report from the Wexner Foundation regarding “Jewish professional leadership today,” as well as other research carried out in the 1990s, provides us with a glimpse into the great dynamism of communal life in the United States (Cohen, Sarna and Fishman, 1995). In general, this research emphasizes the importance of training and developing a new type of leadership, both professional as well as voluntary, as part of global strategic planning. Reisman, for example, considers the training of professional leadership in light of the current needs of communal life pointing out how young generations of North American Jews (third or fourth generation) have easily integrated into their social setting and are seeking a revolutionary change toward a more meaningful communal life. This generation requires a Jewish leader who is both a statesman and an expert (Reisman, 1991: 233-235). The Wexner Foundation report highlights that the reasons for the new generation of professional communal leaders to take this path are not the influence of the Jewish federation, the Jewish school or the synagogue, but rather their personal experiences, family influence or the model role of current leaders (Sarna, 1995: 46).
The new profile of communal life is projected in publications such as the Journal of Jewish Communal Services, edited by the Jewish Communal Service Association (JCSA), an organization that has been active for over a hundred years. In its pages we find a calling for the preservation of the communal service professional and its role in developing a new vision to face the new millennium (Kleinman, 1999; Reisman, 1992). The Jewish leader in a postmodern globalized age must strive to become a unifying element and a generator of common symbolic meaning. For this to occur, leaders must have a clear understanding of the institutional context and the culture of the organization especially when trying to improve Jewish education5 and work towards promoting unity and a sense of belonging. Institutional change is considered impossible to implement without this new type of both lay and professional leadership (Shevitz, 1995: 177-178). Some argue that this new type of leadership should be a “shared leadership”, i.e. leadership based more on team work and less on the charismatic individual (Samuels and Aron, 1999: 25).
One of the central features of community life in Latin America is precisely the lack of strong lay leadership. The old askan (lay person leader) leadership model, justified by early 20th century ideology —which arose from the political parties that are in decay today, such as Avoda and Likud— is gradually disappearing, and no clear continuity with a new vision reflecting the new reality is evident yet. Moreover, the attempt by the JDC to create a setting for the training of new leaders was not very successful among the lay sectors, though it did have a significant impact on the formation of professionals working in the Jewish community. The evolution of Leatid as an entity created by the JDC towards this ends points to the ambivalence of lay leadership.
However, problems within the communal leadership are not easily identifiable as not much research has been devoted to analyzing such issues in Latin America, especially when contrasted with the abundance of literature on Jewish communal leadership in the United States. As an attempt to fill this void, an initiative of the JDC was noted in the aforementioned book by the Argentine psychologist Janan Nudel. For him, “communal leadership could be defined as authoritarianism represented by the figure of the father” and is characterized by the use of the “messianic fantasy” and the dismissal of the professional who is considered a “mercenary” (Nudel, 1989: 37-38). According to this analysis, the Jewish leadership in Argentina is not a dynamic agent for change, but rather part of “the machinery of immobility” (p. 39).
According to Kliksberg (1993: 25), Jewish communal leadership in Latin America operates in a pretty restricted background, ignoring the challenges of an uncertain world. In other words, the lay leadership lacks vision of the regional and international context in which Jewish communities develop. At the same time, Schers (1987: 290) defined the problem of Jewish leadership in Latin America as a function of the lack of positive cultural identification with Judaism, which translates into a problem of identity and cultural dearth.
The rise of alternative leadership, through the activism of socio-sport clubs or within the Conservative (Masorti) movement, did not lead to a stabilization of the institutional settings. On the contrary, in the end, the alternative leadership was canalized through Jewish bankers like Ruben Beraja or Sergio Spolsky. The collapse of their respective banks in 1998 (Mayo and Patricios), generated a chaotic fall in Jewish communal life which resulted in financial debts and a bad reputation that stained the Jewish leadership as a whole. This model was not repeated in Brazil where philanthropic bankers such as the Safra family continue to give significant amounts of money to Jewish institutions, without intervening in the internal political arena or establishing their own power base. Communal leadership is today comprised of rabbis from the different movements6 and constitutes a model whose success is worth studying more in depth and on a comparative level.
Within the Judeo-Argentine context, the symptoms of instability were found to be caused by internal dissolution. Responsibility for the problems was attributed to the fragmentation and the damage of the moral reputation of its leadership. This internal struggle was identified by two prestigious newspaper reporters as the clearest symptom of the communal crisis in Argentina towards the end of the 20th century (Melamed, 2004: 14f; 235-240; Chab, 2001: 17, 264-267).7 Regarding this subject, the historian Efraim Zadoff proposed that “the Jewish leadership has failed in articulating Jewish interests, a fact that may be seen as a symptom of a new stage in the changing trends of incorporation and integration of Argentine Jews” (2000: 38).
Jewish continuity and communal crisis
The concept of continuity has been a central axis in Jewish communal life in the United States since the National Community Census of 1990. The urgent problems that the Jewish community confronted were decadence in the organized community, demographic decline and crisis in leadership. Several researchers attempted to develop a ‘strategic vision for the Jewish Community’, starting by addressing issues of assimilation and acculturation. Woocher (1995) suggested the rebuilding of communities and cultures as social realities, both vital and cognitive, that will nourish and preserve strong Jewish identities. In a postmodern world, every community must begin from the individual and his or her needs. This is the main principle which Jewish continuity can be built upon. The community, above all, must offer a sense of meaning and hospitality (p. 24).
Sarna argues that North American Judaism is afflicted by a crisis of confidence which manifests itself in four challenges: 1) the preservation of Jewish continuity; 2) the changing nature of Jewish Identity; 3) the threat of a lack of sense of hospitality and belonging felt by North American Jews and 4) the dissolution with the sense of unity and the strong links towards the State of Israel. These challenges, according to Sarna, are symptoms of crisis, yet at the same time, they offer the potential for renovation and positive change.
More recent research, such as the book by Cohen and Eisen (2000), emphasizes this conclusion. The proposed new guidelines of a community life rest more and more on the archetype of a ‘sovereign Jew’, whose identity is complex and whose connection stems from his or her subjective needs and symbolic meanings. In 2003, Cohen published an interesting work on research regarding Jewish identity in the U.S that appeared in a volume that deals with the issue defined in its title: Continuity, commitment and survival (Encel and Stein, 2003). The author emphasizes the shift in focus from integrationism to survivalism, a shift which took hold in 1967. Since the end of the 1980s, a middle ground has prevailed which emphasizes continuity or authenticity, and new forms of Jewish identity based on the gathering of data from empirical research. Jewish identity in the United States, even if grounded in cultural significances which defined it as belonging to the religious and ritualistic dimension, also adopted ethnic nuances. Without the ethnic dimension, it is hard to understand the sense of belonging and inclusion within the communal framework. This includes the shared vision of having common ancestry, sharing a culture and historic milestones as well as a shared destiny (Cohen, 2003: 13). It is interesting to note that empirical research in the U.S. shows a decline in ethnic expressions of Judaism, such as endogamy, affiliation to Jewish institutions, level of philanthropy and enthusiasm towards Israel. But at the same time, the level of collective achievement and commitment from the Jewish community elite (lay people, donors and practicing Jews) points to great advances that can be measured both quantitatively and qualitatively.
In other words, North American researchers such as Moshe Davis, an Israeli born in the United States, identify the problems in the Jewish community as a ‘crisis of Jewish identity’, which is expressed through ‘detachment’ manifested in mixed marriages and in the ideology of assimilation and acculturation. To Davis, this problem is “common to the Jews of Canada, the United States and Argentina and represents ‘the crisis of identification’ which is affecting many Jews” (Davis, 1963, citing the Spanish translation (1967): 18-27, citation on p. 19).
Diego Melamed sees the 1990s as a “period of convulsions” marked by the collapse “in buildings, interests and values” of the Jewish community in Argentina, which, at the end of the millennium, was left “fractured and betrayed by its representatives” (2000: 13-15).
According to the World Jewish Congress, the critical condition of the Jews in Argentina since 1998 has been epitomized by two fundamental milestones: the attack against the Amia-Daia in July 1994, and the collapse of the Mayo and Patricios banks in 1998. The official dispatch of this situation is described as “From crisis to crisis” (World Jewish Congress, 1998: 1-4). Thus ‘community in distress’ appears to be a more and more appropriate label to characterize the situation of Argentine Jewry. Still, this very expression was adopted by Kliksberg (2002) to describe not only the condition of Argentine Jews, declaring it “a Jewish community in danger”, but also the condition of all Latin America. According to Kliksberg the most important symptom of this structural crisis is the general impoverishment of the middle class and the resurgence of a “dramatic social scheme” of “a new Jewish poverty” in particular (pp. 5-15).
Several researchers of Argentine Jewry widely use the concept of community crisis to characterize the internal structural situation towards the end of the last century and the beginning of this one. The crisis is mainly associated with the financial and economic condition which arose in 1998 and climaxed in 2002 (Zadoff, 2000: 35, 141; Schenkolewski-Kroll, 2004: 194f). Avni stresses the relationship between this community crisis and the national and social context of the country, especially towards the year 2002. Yet he defines it as “an immanent crisis in the last decade of the 20th century” (Avni, 2005: 450-453). Almost all of these authors link this crisis to the weakened structure of communal leadership, as well as its fragmentation. Nonetheless, the journalist Silvia Chab was the only one who took on the concept of crisis as a central axis in her investigative reporting book. She defines this crisis as “internal diasporization”, founded in the “crisis of a functioning institutionalized and centralized system, and in the sense that the term community ever had” (2001: 17; 261)
Judith Elkin opted to portray the condition of Argentine Jewry as a “cataclysm”, a “bankruptcy of institutions”, a sense of “vulnerability and isolation”, within the national context of a “chaotic economy”, “government corruption” and “disaster” (2003: 149f). Without using the concept of crisis, Elkin presents a pessimistic analysis regarding the future of Argentine Jewry, one of “disintegration” and disorientation regarding “strategies for Jewish survival” with the failure of the Secular-Zionist model of Jewish continuity. The author concludes that the destruction of the national economy which took place at the beginning of this millennium could inflict a “mortal blow to the Jewish community in Argentina” (pp. 165-170).
The concept of communal crisis is rarely applied to Brazilian Judaism, which some perceive as a “great community whose members are now full participants in every aspect of the social, political and cultural life of the country” (Falbel, 2001: 16). Thus, it is not surprising that the success of social integration may be seen as a double edged sword, and that the main concern is the fleeting Jewish identity of its youth. The main problem is, then, that of Jewish continuity due to the “centrifugal attraction of an open society” (pp. 24-27). On the other hand, the sociologist Bernardo Sorj defines Brazil as the “country of the future”, or a “country with no memory.” A society that rejects the past or undervalues it, a fact that in a way facilitates the integration of Jews as immigrants, yet demands a great price at the organizational level of the Jewish community. According to Sorj, this dilemma brought about by modernity endangers the socialization mechanisms of organized Jewish life (1997: 17, 19).
This sociological approach is clearly adopted by Monica Grin (1997) in her study about the crisis of modern Judaism in the Brazilian context. By undertaking a political-institutional analysis of the Israelite Federation in Rio de Janeiro, Grin stresses the permanent struggle among two models of kehila: the centralizing one, which is based on European Jewish life until the Second World War, and the modernizing one, which promoted the pluralistic approach among the communal frameworks (pp. 103-107). In other words, the debate around the crisis of Brazilian Jewry is presented according to the paradigm of the research agenda of North American and Western Judaism. The framework is that of a dilemma of Jewish identity and social disintegration, and not that of a socio-economic problem, or a physical existential threat.
Conclusions
In the light of the theoretical analysis discussed, it is possible to conclude that the challenges of communal life in the 21st century demand an approach encompassing the three axes that we have presented. A circular flux among these axes is the key in understanding the symptoms of the communal crisis. The lack of connection between strategic planning, the capability to build and renew communal institutions according to the new identities and needs of the Jewish individual, and a professional and lay leadership with new visions may together explain the existence of a crisis with destructive potential that could threaten the Jewish continuity in a globalized, multi-cultural world.
The comparison between Jewry in United States and in South America shows not only three different models of Jewish continuity, but it also highlights the importance of deepening the systematic comparative research in Jewish communal life in Latin America. An interdisciplinary vision that incorporates sociological and anthropological aspects of the communal organization and new schemes of Jewish identity is necessary to better understand the answers of the Jewish world to the impact of globalization. In this sense, the systematic comparison between Jewish communal life in Argentina and Brazil can greatly contribute to the understanding of this phenomenon on an international level.
[1] The original English version of this pioneering work was presented in the “Third World Congress of Jewish Studies” which took place at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1961.
[2] See also Schers’ (1987) article, the result of his lecture at the LAJSA (Latin American Jewish Studies Association) congress which took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in March, 1984.
[3] Contacto (May 1995), Year 3, N° 4, Buenos Aires: Joint Distribution Committee. See dossier “Strategic Alliances”, approaches from J. Nudel, B. Blejmar and J. Schulman, pp. 11-20
4 Contacto (December 1995), Year 3, N° 5, Buenos Aires: American Joint Distribution Committee, pp. 8-9
5 See the N° 11 of Agenda: Jewish Education (Spring 1999), specifically the articles written by Green and Flexner.
6 Such as Rabbi Tzvi Grumblatt from Chabad in Argentina, Rabbi Daniel Goldman from the Bet El community in Buenos Aires, Rabbi Sergio Bergman from the Israelite Congregation and the Judaic Foundation, Rabbi Milton Bonder from the Conservative Movement in Rio de Janeiro, etc.
7 See more about this subject bellow, in the section “Jewish continuity and communal crisis”.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)