No, I can legitimately report from first hand observation, there is no discernible difference in the rotation of water in a sink or toilet in the southern hemisphere compared to North America.
Trivial as that information is, it serves as the gateway to my report on Gilda’s and my recent two week journey to Argentina organized by our synagogue,Temple Israel Center of White Plains, in conjunction with Keshet Educational Journeys of Israel, as part of a continuing odyssey to lands of Jewish heritage, current and past (two years ago we traveled to Morocco.)
The trip we participated in had two distinct parts, one Jewish cultural, the other an exploration of Argentina’s natural beauty.
Some 230,000 Jews live in Argentina, 85% in the greater Buenos Aires area, making the country the sixth largest concentration of Jews in the world. They represent the second wave of immigration, the first being in the 1500s-1600s, all of whom died off, assimilated or emigrated to other lands including, via a short stay in Recife, Brazil, New Amsterdam, the Dutch colony that became New York once the British gained sovereignty over the area in 1664. In 1654, they were the first Jews to settle in North America.
Jews returned en masse to Argentina in 1860 as part of a pan European migration to escape famines, poverty, persecutions and wars that has made Argentina among the most cosmopolitan of countries. Antisemitism fueled Jewish emigration. Among Jewish immigrants, German Jews were first, followed by their brethren from more eastern countries.
They prospered, at one time numbering some 350,000. They established synagogues, religious schools and country clubs that cemented cultural and ethnic bonds. Yes, they encountered assimilation, but for many intermarriage meant a marriage between an Ashkenazi and a Sephardic couple. The city has some 60 Jewish day schools. Along the narrow streets of the city’s commercial district many kosher restaurants can be found. Buenos Aires even boasts the only kosher McDonald’s outside of Israel.
Perhaps the most memorable Friday evening Kabbalat Shabbat service I ever attended was at Comunidad Amijai, a Masorti/Conservative synagogue. After passing through a nondescript streetfront door, our group encountered a beautiful, expansive courtyard before entering a vast, wooden sanctuary with plush seating for more than a thousand congregants rapturously engaged by a bongo playing/singing rabbi, guitar playing cantor, female vocalist, another drummer and a pianist. Commentary was in Spanish, but Hebrew prayers being universal, foreign guests felt comfortable and welcome.
Most days in Buenos Aires we were instructed by Rabbi Ernesto Yattah, dean of the rabbinical seminary of Latin America. Yattah was a disciple of Rabbi Marshal T. Meyer, was a former congregational rabbi in Houston, and is an expert on Jewish history and life in Argentina. His expertise included a personal link to Eva Peron.
Yattah’s father and uncle owned a fabric store frequented by the entertainer Maria Eva Duarte. His father asked their general manager to escort her on January 22, 1944, to Luna Park Stadium for a charity event for earthquake victims in San Juan, Argentina. It was there that she met Juan Perón. They married the following year.
During the last half of the 20th century Argentina wavered between democracy and dictatorships. Juan Perón headed two governments, one taken by force, one elected by the people. Perón courted the working class. His second wife, Eva, commonly called Evita, championed women’s rights and the poor. She died of cancer at 33 in 1952. Perón’s third wife, Isabel, succeeded him as president when he died in office July 1, 1974. A coup removed her after less than two years. Shortly thereafter the “Dirty War” began. It was only after the military lost the war with Great Britain over the Falkland Islands that its grip on the government ended and democracy rekindled.
Though less than 0.5% of the country’s population, Jews have wielded disproportionate influence, a factor that resulted in a disproportionate number of Jewish victims during the Dirty War junta years of the late 1970s-early 1980s when as many as 30,000 Argentinians were imprisoned, tortured, killed or simply vanished. Jews accounted for 15% of the “missing,” not because of their religion but rather because of their intellectualism and socialistic leanings.
Among the heroes responsible for contesting the oppression was Rabbi Meyer, an outspoken critic of the junta who visited the imprisoned and recorded names from all faiths. After Meyer left Argentina, in 1985 he joined Congregation B’nai Jeshurun on Manhattan’s Upper West Side as its rabbi.
Jacobo Timerman, a Jewish journalist and publisher, publicly confronted the military. He was imprisoned and tortured, eventually exiled to Israel where he wrote of his persecution: “Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number.” He returned to Buenos Aires after the junta was toppled. Rabbi Yattah arranged for Timerman’s son, Javier, to talk with our group.
Meyer and Timerman were not alone in confronting the military. Every Thursday afternoon at 3:30 women wearing white kerchiefs symbolizing a baby’s diaper paraded around the central square of Buenos Aires demanding information on their loved ones, often their children, taken by the junta.
The imprisoned were housed in multiple locations including the former Officers’ Quarters of the Navy Mechanics School in a middle class neighborhood on a busy thoroughfare of the capital. It is now the Museum of Memory. Gone are any instruments of torture. But on the grounds of the museum sits a twin engine propeller plane from which drugged prisoners weighted down by cannonballs were dumped into the Atlantic Ocean.
Explosive terrorism twice struck the Jewish community. In 1992 the Israeli embassy was blown up. In 1994 a bombing destroyed part of AMIA, the headquarters of the Jewish community of Buenos Aires. Both attacks were attributed to Iran and its proxies.
Despite United States pressure for Argentina to side with the Allies during World War II, the country remained neutral, a position favored by Winston Churchill. Argentina was Britain’s bread basket during the war. Churchill feared Nazi submarines would sink Argentinian ships carrying much needed grain to Britian if the country aligned with the Allies.
With its sizable German immigrant population Argentina was a natural refuge for Nazis fleeing after the war. Adolf Eichmann, organizer of the “Final Solution” to kill Jews, changed his last name when living in Buenos Aires. His sons did not. He posed as their uncle.
One of the sons started dating the Jewish daughter of a mostly blind man, Lothar Hermann, who became convinced the “uncle” was Adolf Eichmann. Hermann wrote letters to the Mossad in Israel. An initial investigation was inconclusive. Hermann’s suspicions were reinforced when the boyfriend called Eichmann “father” when walking with his date.
Mossad’s subsequent investigation led to positive identification, Eichmann’s kidnapping, trial in Israel and execution, the only judicial death penalty ever exacted by Israel. Lothar Hermann’s role is part of the exhibition inside the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires.
Perhaps I’ve seen too many Hollywood movies that have colored, even in black and white, my picture of what South America would be. The second part of our trip provided spectacular natural vistas stretching from the north to the extreme south.
Thirteen hundred kilometers (780 miles) to the north of Buenos Aires, straddling the border with Brazil, are the Iguazu Falls, a series of more than 275 waterfalls ranging in height from 197 to 269 feet. They form the largest waterfall system in the world. Aside from gazing at them from catwalks above, most of our group boarded large speed boats that took us nearly into the cascading waters. We were drenched by the spray.
From Iguazu we flew south, first back to Buenos Aires, then another 780 miles, with stops in El Calafate and Ushaia. Calafate is part of Patagonia, near Argentino Lake, the largest in the country. Aboard a multi-level catamaran we sailed close to glaciers. On nearby land we heard and saw a glacier “calving” icebergs.
Ushaia is the jumping off seaport for trips to Antarctica. As the fall season had just begun, those trips had ended. We paddled a 10-person raft in the Beagle Strait that carried Darwin linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. We hiked in Tierra Del Fuego National Park along the coastline, trekking poles not required but thankfully provided by our tour guides.
In Calafate and Ushaia the Argentinian integration with nature was exemplified by their laissez-faire attitude toward seemingly stray dogs and horses. The canines and equines roamed streets and trails, never barked or neighed, and kept their respectful distance from humans.
If dogs and horses were omnipresent, also ubiquitous was the consumption of “mate” (pronounced ma-Tay), a caffeinated drink Argentinians drink throughout the day through special straws, mostly made of metal. They can be be seen carrying thermoses from which they pour mate into small cups. Said to be slightly bitter in taste (I did not try it), mate is believed to be an energy booster.
A few words about accommodations: With one exception for religious purposes, each hotel we stayed in was exceptional and kept raising the bar for our next stay. The Sofitel in Recoleta, Buenos Aires, was very nice. The Loi Suites Iguazu Hotel in a subtropical rainforest was breathtaking, especially when traversing the slatted, shaking suspension bridges linking different buildings on the property. In Calafate, the Xelena Hotel provided a view of the lake, while the Arakur Resort and Spa in Ushaia overlooked the harbor and one of its trails led to a promontory with an expansive observation of the tip of the continent.
