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Laura Limonic’s Kugel and Frijoles raises a series of questions relevant to the social sciences, migration studies, and Latin American Jewish studies: In what ways do immigrants navigate ethnic and racial categories in their host society?... more
Laura Limonic’s Kugel and Frijoles raises a series of questions relevant to the social sciences, migration studies, and Latin American Jewish studies: In what ways do immigrants navigate ethnic and racial categories in their host society? How is “insider” status obtained within existing social hierarchies, and how does it influence life chances? To what extent are immigrants able to define their identities to situate themselves within American society? How do various groups interact with the host society’s structural conditions, leading to particular outcomes, such as assimilation? Limonic specifies two conditions conducive to immigrant assimilation in the United States: high human and social capital combined with racial proximity to the host society’s mainstream. To test her hypotheses, Limonic conducted eighty-five in-depth interviews of Latin American Jewish immigrants—mostly from Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela—as well as participant observation in Argentina. Additionally, she analyzed data from the Pew Center’s study on American Jews. She presents new information on an understudied population. Limonic considers assimilation the main outcome for Latino Jews in the United States, and nonassimilation for Jews in Latin America. However, socioeconomic, political, and cultural realities are more complex. Limonic nods to the diversity of the Latin American landscape, but subsumes it under an overriding commonality: “While it is not possible to describe the rich history of immigration, community building, and economic and social insertion of Jews in Latin America in one chapter, it is possible to glean from these cases concordant themes that unite the Jewish experience across Latin America” (43). These themes include status as religious minorities vis-à-vis the Catholic majority, strong communal institutions, and elevated levels of antisemitism, which contribute to the development of an ethnic and cultural Jewish identity that differs from Jewish identities in the United States. However, there are multiple realities in Latin America and its Jewish communities. Limonic argues that Latin American Jews “have a strong sense of Jewishness and are often immersed in vibrant and robust communities.” But, as has been widely analyzed (by Haim Avni, Judit Bokser Liwerant, and Book Reviews
En el conflicto irresuelto de Chipre se conjugan las secuelas historicas que dejaron multiples conquistas, la geopolitica singular de la isla mediterranea, asi como el aspecto etnico nacional y el religioso. Mas alla del choque entre dos... more
En el conflicto irresuelto de Chipre se conjugan las secuelas historicas que dejaron multiples conquistas, la geopolitica singular de la isla mediterranea, asi como el aspecto etnico nacional y el religioso. Mas alla del choque entre dos identidades, el conflicto se arraiga en la rivalidad entre dos comunidades, Grecia y Turquia.
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Second conference in the “In Global Transit” series, organized by the Pacifi c Regional Offi ce of the German Historical Institute Washington (GHI West) in cooperation with the Max Weber Stift ung Branch Offi ces in Delhi and Beijing, and... more
Second conference in the “In Global Transit” series, organized by the Pacifi c Regional Offi ce of the German Historical Institute Washington (GHI West) in cooperation with the Max Weber Stift ung Branch Offi ces in Delhi and Beijing, and the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley, held May 20–22, 2019 at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life. Conveners: Wolf Gruner (USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Los Angeles), Simone Lä ssig (GHI), Francesco Spagnolo (The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Berkeley), Swen Steinberg (Queen’s University, Kingston). Participants: Eliyana Adler (Pennsylvania State University), Anna-Carolin Augustin (GHI), Lorena Á vila Jaimes (Konrad Adenauer Foundation Rule of Law Program for Latin America), Tobias Brinkmann (Pennsylvania State University), Pallavi Chakravarty (Ambedkar University, Delhi), Kimberly Cheng (New York University), Anna Cichopek-Gajraj (Arizona State Universit...
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During World War II, Mexico kept a selective and restrictive migratory politics towards the Jewish exile. Even though that politics was not singular in the region, it surprises that Mexico received only a group of 2,000 refugees. Despite... more
During World War II, Mexico kept a selective and restrictive migratory politics towards the Jewish exile. Even though that politics was not singular in the region, it surprises that Mexico received only a group of 2,000 refugees. Despite this, Mexico became a permanent shelter for many refugees. The analysis focuses on the story of a survivor of the Holocaust -Bronislaw Zajbert- who was forced to move from his house in Lodz to be sent with his family to the ghetto of the city and emigrated first to Venezuela and later to Mexico. His experience swinging between the moving and the fixing contrasts the intensive mobility of those who managed to move in Europe to run away from Nazism. Their journey to Latin America emerges as a convergent experience while Mexico offered them in both cases the chance of finishing their displacement. It is an exploratory study that investigates how the individual experience of the transit impacted the construction of an affective and material home in Mexico.
... Thanks go also to Hassan Jaber of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS), who was a friend of the project from the beginning, and to Radwan Khoury of the Arab American and Chaldean Council (ACC), who was a... more
... Thanks go also to Hassan Jaber of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS), who was a friend of the project from the beginning, and to Radwan Khoury of the Arab American and Chaldean Council (ACC), who was a strong advocate of the study. ...
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Los vínculos entre el Holocausto y América Latina constituyen un tema casi inexplorado. Junto con los Estados Unidos, los países latinoamericanos en conjunto recibieron el mayor número de refugiados europeos a lo largo de las décadas de... more
Los vínculos entre el Holocausto y América Latina constituyen un tema casi inexplorado. Junto con los Estados Unidos, los países latinoamericanos en conjunto recibieron el mayor número de refugiados europeos a lo largo de las décadas de 1930 y 1940. Durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial el continente ocupó un lugar destacado en un escenario global altamente interconectado y, por tanto, es fundamental incorporar una perspectiva transnacional para examinar los múltiples contactos, vínculos e intercambios creados por los actores sociales y políticos a través de las fronteras de los Estados nación y más allá de las geografías del Holocausto en el continente europeo. Al rastrear la forma en que los agentes individuales y colectivos interactuaron en los planos estatales, sociales y comunitarios, es posible arrojar luz sobre una historia compleja de procesos, tanto interconectados como independientes. Aunque México fue uno de los países latinoamericanos que admitió un menor número de refugiados (alrededor de 2 000) su papel como nación huésped ofrece una rica oportunidad para explorar aspectos fundamentales del rescate, supervivencia e integración, así como para analizar las interconexiones entre los actores gubernamentales y no gubernamentales, que fueron frecuentes e intensas durante y después de la guerra. En términos metodológicos, se ofrecen algunas claves para aproximar las historias micro y macro, así como para relacionar el análisis histórico basado en fuentes primarias con la historia oral.