Buenos Aires Jewish Community
The Buenos Aires Jewish community was established in 1862, and held its first traditional Jewish wedding in 1868. The first synagogue was inaugurated in 1875. The Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe who settled in Argentina were called rusos (Russians) by the local population.
In January 1919 in Buenos Aires, during a general strike, the police fomented pogroms that targeted Jews and destroyed their property. In the strike's aftermath, civilian vigilante gangs (the Argentine Patriotic League) went after so-called agitators (agitadores), and killed or wounded "scores of victims", including "numerous Russian Jews who were falsely accused of masterminding a Communist conspiracy".
European Jews continued to immigrate to Argentina, including during the Great Depression of the 1930s and to escape increasing Nazi persecutiion. "In 1939 half the owners and workers of small manufacturing plants were foreigners, many of them newly arrived Jewish refugees from Central Europe".
Jewish cultural and religious organizations flourished in the cities; a Yiddish press and theatre opened in Buenos Aires, as well as a Jewish hospital and a number of Zionist organizations.
Read more about this topic: Argentine Jews
Famous quotes containing the words jewish and/or community:
“Don: Why are they closed? They’re all closed, every one of them.
Pawnbroker: Sure they are. It’s Yom Kippur.
Don: It’s what?
Pawnbroker: It’s Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday.
Don: It is? So what about Kelly’s and Gallagher’s?
Pawnbroker: They’re closed, too. We’ve got an agreement. They keep closed on Yom Kippur and we don’t open on St. Patrick’s.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“When a language creates—as it does—a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.”
—Christopher Ricks (b. 1933)