Baruch Tenembaum - Education and Activism

Education and Activism

In 1952, Tenembaum graduated from the Higher Institute of Judaic Religious Studies. As a teacher and a professor he taught Hebrew and Yiddish language and literature, the Torah, the Prophets and Mishnah. In 1955, he was appointed Director of the Moises Ville Teacher's Seminar in the province of Santa Fe where he taught the Old Testament and philosophy.

He was First General Director of the Argentine-Israeli Cultural Institute (ICAI). Important undertakings in the field of education were set in motion and announced from his office, including bar mitzvah tours and the founding of the Tarbut School, among others. He organised the first Latin-American Bible contest. He translated Spanish classics into Hebrew and 'Haskala' literature into Spanish.

He launched the idea of establishing interfaith monuments by promoting the creation of a fresco by the Argentine master painter Raúl Soldi at the main church in Nazareth, which was completed in 1968.

In 1965, he was a Latin American promoter of the first visit by a Pope to Jerusalem. Granted an award for his work by the Vatican, he was invited to a ceremony at the Vatican City and was received by Pope Paul VI on January 13, 1965. At a separate public ceremony, Monsignor Antonio Caggiano, Cardinal Primate of Argentina, presented him with an Argentine Church award, granted for the very first time for a Jew Jew in Argentina.

Along with writer Jorge Luis Borges, he founded la Casa Argentina en Jerusalem, with branches in Buenos Aires and Jerusalem. He was worked on interreligious initiatives with Rabbi Guillermo Schlesinger, Father Carlos Cuccetti, Pastor Sosa and Father Ernesto Segura, who was the first President of Argentine House in Israel.

Tenembaum's Jewish and humanist education is a result of a deep devotion of his teacher and mentor, Rabbi Jacobo Fink, an orthodox rabbi who initiated him in the Jewish knowledge and the Kabbalah, and guided him all of his life. Even if they were far away (he was Great Rabbi in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Haifa, Israel, and Buenos Aires, Argentina) so close was their relationship that every Friday they had a conversation, which was never ever postponed until the last day of his life.

He was the co-author, together with Dr. Shalom Rosenberg, professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University at Jerusalem, of the book 'Holy Places in the Holy Land'.