Jewish Buenos Aires / Beginner · Starts July 4, 2016

Jewish Buenos Aires: A Virtual Tour

This first part of the Virtual Tour of Jewish Buenos Aires will introduce us to the Argentine Jewish community. Beginning with a brief presentation of the story of Portuguese Crypto-Jews in Colonial Buenos Aires who were protected by Franciscan friars, we will then trace the immigration and origins of the current Jewish community of Argentina—the sixth largest in the world. We will explore the fascinating story of the Jewish Gauchos in the Pampas of Argentina, and how the community was formed with its beautiful Sephardic and Ashkenazic synagogues, Kosher restaurants, day schools and Jewish community centers. We will take a close look at the two terrorist attacks against the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and the Jewish Federation of Buenos Aires (AMIA) in 1994. We will conclude with a visit to a moving Memorial in honor of the victims of the Shoah and of the two terrorist attacks inside the Metropolitan Cathedral of Buenos Aires and talk about the relationship of the late Pope Francis with the Jewish people. In the second part of the Virtual Tour of Jewish Buenos Aires, we will explore the more polemical and controversial aspects of the history of the Argentine Jewish community. We begin by looking at the political, economic, and cultural background that explains the neutrality of Argentina in Second World War and the coming of the Nazi war criminals to Argentina after the war. We take a close look at the story of Perón and Evita, and with the help of benchmark academic works of leading scholars in the field, we will evaluate the complex relationship of Perón with the Germans and the Nazis on the one hand and with the Jewish people on the other hand. We will learn about the capture of Adolph Eichmann in a Northern suburb of Buenos Aires by the Israeli Mossad. And we will study the last military dictatorship, which killed 30,000 young people, 20% of whom were Jewish. We will focus on the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, highlighting the work of an American-born rabbi on behalf of human rights and the story of an internationally famous Argentine journalist who was kidnapped and tortured by the military regime.