B"H

Jewish Tours

Buenos Aires, Argentina

ARGENTINA

ARGENTINA, South American Federal Republic, general population (2004) 39,150,000; Jewish population 190,000.

THE SHADOW OF NATIONALISM: 1930–1946

Jewish Education

The Jewish educational network had to cope with the implementation of Catholic instruction in the official schools and consequently with the removal of non-Catholic pupils from such classes. Nevertheless, neither the overt public hostility, nor the occasional official prohibition of the use of Yiddish at public meetings arrested the development of the Jewish community. The Chevra Keduscha (which became in the 1940s AMIA) increased its communal activities and in 1935 founded in Buenos Aires the Va'ad ha-Ḥinnukh, a committee that centralized the educational system in Buenos Aires (with several dozen complementary schools), which had hitherto been promoted mainly by various synagogues, by some Zionist parties, and by the Zionist Teachers' Organization. From that time on the Jewish schools became one of the most vital forces enhancing Jewish socialization and community organization in Argentina, and they reflected the various streams of Jewish political views in the community. Until the late 1960s these schools functioned on a complementary basis, while the children were free from studies in the public schools, either in the morning shift or in the afternoon. The existing schools, for Ashkenazim and Sephardim, had many ideological trends: religious, traditional, leftist, secular, Zionist, non-Zionist, and anti-Zionist. The Va'ad ha-Ḥinnukh succeeded in 15 years of activity in bringing most of the schools to a minimal common curricula and in improving the physical conditions of the schools as well as the working conditions of the teachers. In the 1930s and the 1940s Yiddish was almost the only language of instruction for most Ashkenazi schools, even for the Zionist ones. The number of students in Jewish schools in Buenos Aires together with the schools coordinated by the Va'ad ha-Ḥinnukh Haroshi in the provinces rose from 5,300 in 1940 to more than 11,000 in 1950, more than 25% of the children of school age. This increase in the school population brought a rise in the demand for teachers. The Va'ad ha-Ḥinnukh of Buenos Aires responded to this situation by founding the Seminar Lemorim (Teacher's Seminar) in 1940 and five years later the CIRA founded the Machon Lelimudei Hayahaduth (Institute for Jewish Studies), which prepared teachers and functionaries for the Jewish religious establishment. The ideological map started to shift during these years, with the schools declaring a Zionist identification and adopting Hebrew as the language of instruction increasing. Jewish public institutions and cultural life continued to develop, and the recent arrivals from Central Europe founded their own communal and religious organizations, including the Asociación Filantrópica Israelita (1933), the Juedische Kulturgemeinschaft (1937), and both Orthodox and Liberal congregations.

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