Volume 5, Issue 10 / Tishrei, 5763 / October 2002
Argentinean Immigrants Celebrate in a Warm Sukka
By Simon Griver
Cecilia Cohen has rarely had the opportunity to spend Sukkot in a sukka. In her native Patagonia in Southern Argentina she explained that her family had built a sukka several times in her childhood, but with her home city of Comodoro Rivadavia continually buffeted by end of winter high winds, sitting in the booth was a precarious business.
Cohen, 21, was one of 66 Latin American students, mainly from Argentina, who immigrated to Israel at the end of August. Within the framework of the Jewish Agency's TAKA Program for young adult immigrants wishing to continue studying for academic degrees in Israel, the students are housed at the Calanit Absorption Center in Ashkelon.
"There are 20 Jewish families in my home city," explained Cohen. "It is difficult to be Jewish there. I guess if you have the convictions, as my parents have proved, you can be Jewish anywhere in the Diaspora. I also spent several years studying English in Buenos Aires. It is much easier to be Jewish there. I spent a year in Israel in 1999 at the Jewish Agency's Kiryat Moriah campus in Jerusalem on a young leadership program and I decided then that Israel is the most comfortable place for me to live."
Cohen, who wants to study Art History or Education at university, said that there were economic as well as cultural and religious reasons for making aliyah. "The economic crisis has not hit oil-rich Patagonia as badly as other regions of Argentina," she explained. "But my mother, who is a psychiatrist and my father, who is an x-ray technician, work so hard, sometimes 20 hours a day, and at the end of the month they have hardly any money to show for it. It is very depressing."
Sergio Goz, 27, from Parana in Entre Rios State in northern Argentina had already visited Israel three times. "I have grandparents here," he said, "and my brother Gustavo and sister Alexandra have already made aliyah. My parents are unlikely to emigrate soon, but when my father, who is a surgeon, retires I hope that they will come and live in Israel."
Goz recalled that in recent years due to budget cuts the small Jewish community in Parana could not afford its own sukka, but a mobile sukka would be taken from community to community.
Goz, who has a BA in Business Administration from the University of Palermo in Buenos Aires, hopes to study for a MBA at the Hebrew University.
"Since coming here I feel a new person," he explained. "As a teenager I went to public school in the morning and Jewish school in the afternoon, so I am very familiar with Jewish culture. With the deterioration of the economic situation in Argentina I am very fearful that anti-Semitism will be on the rise."
Javier Turek, 21, from Buenos Aires is comforted by the conspicuous number of police, army and security personnel in the country. " I felt very unsafe in Argentina," he explained. "The level of violent crime is very high. If you stop at traffic lights and put your arm out of the window you're likely to have your watch stolen."
Turek had never been to Israel before and already feels very comfortable in the country. He was mid-way through a computer science degree at the University of Buenos Aires and hopes to be able to continue his studies at the Technion in Haifa.
"I've enjoyed being in Israel during the High Holydays and Sukkot," he said. "But traditionally in Argentina the festivals are a time when all the family come together so it has meant that I have missed them a lot."
Missing her family has not been a problem for Natalia Glickman, 23, who made aliyah with her parents Alisia and Rafael and her brother Aryeh, who are all living in Ra'anana. Glickman comes from Cordoba in Western Argentina where she was studying Business Administration at the University of Cordoba and she hopes to continue her studies in Israel.
"I think the economic situation in Argentina gave us the push to come to Israel," she explained. "First I decided to come to Israel and then my parents and then my brother. But we would have come regardless of economic considerations. I believe strongly in tradition and I want to pass onto the family that I build what my parents gave to me. I don't think it will be easy to do that in a dwindling Jewish community that numbers only 1,500."
"I am not naive," added Glickman who had never before visited Israel, "and I realize that I have not come to a land flowing with milk and honey. There are problems here. But I was more afraid of the future in Argentina."
"Now I am here I realize why sukkot can only properly be celebrated in Israel," she explained. "In Cordoba the Jewish community always had a sukka but it was too cold to sit in it."
Melina Bromiguer, 20, from Buenos Aires is the TAKA group's counselor. She herself immigrated from Argentina in March and hopes to study graphic design at Bezalel College in Jerusalem next year.
"Meanwhile I am building up my work portfolio, improving my Hebrew and saving some money," she said. Brominguer's parents and sisters have also made aliyah.
Credits: Photos by Vera Etzion.
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