“Judaism is maintained in South America by a miracle.” So says Rabbi Angel Kreiman, a 27-year-old Argentine-born lawyer ordained by the Conservative rabbinical seminary in Buenos Aires. Rabbi Kreiman flies to Santiago, Chile this week to take over the pulpit at the largest synagogue there, the Circulo Israelita, and to minister to a Jewish community of 1000 families who have been without a rabbi for nearly two years, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a telephone interview today.
Chile, with a Jewish population of 30,000, 90 percent in Santiago, once had five rabbis. By 1970, when Marxist President Salvador Allende was elected, only two remained and they have left since, Rabbi Kreiman said. But he was not certain whether Allende’s taking office had anything to do with their departure.
He said, “There is a problem of leaders, of ideas, of rabbis, of everything. Judaism is maintained in South America by a miracle. The future lies with modern Jewish education that can give South American youth values to be identified as Jews. Jewish religious problems are also social problems. That must be the Jewish purpose and the purpose of a rabbi–not to speak of a theoretical Torah but a practical Torah. Words are not important if there is no actual work. I am going to teach. A rabbi’s prime purpose has to be to teach.”
Rabbi Kreiman said he would concentrate on youth in his new post because the elders “are already used to having no rabbi.” The youthful rabbi is no stranger to Chile. Between 1968-70 he commuted weekly by air from Buenos Aires to Santiago to conduct Sabbath services in the Chilean capital’s biggest synagogue which had no rabbi even then. During 1970-72 he served in Barranquilla, Colombia where, he said, the Jewish community was typical of Latin America. “It had no rabbi for 30 years.”
Rabbi Kreiman is a fourth generation Argentinean. He told the JTA that his great-great-grandfather was among the first Russian Jews to immigrate to Argentina under the aegis of Baron Maurice de Hirsch, the Munich-born philanthropist who established Jewish agricultural colonies in the Argentine with what Kreiman calls “Jewish gauchos.” He said 70 percent of Argentine Jewry now is native-born.
Rabbi Kreiman is married and the father of a daughter. He was ordained by the Semanario Rabinico Latino Americano, a Conservative seminary founded in Buenos Aires 12 years ago which is affiliated with the World Council of Synagogues. The young rabbi speaks seven languages, including English, Yiddish and Hebrew. He said that he would “encourage aliya 150 percent” because “the building of Judaism in the diaspora is only temporary.” He did not elaborate on that remark.
If Santiago now has a rabbi it still lacks other essentials of a Jewish religious life. There is no resident mohel and kosher meat must be flown in from Buenos Aires.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
