Jews in Latin America Need Rabbis and Teachers to Check Assimilation

The Jewish communities of Latin America must have many more Jewish teachers and rabbis if they are to resist the advance of assimilation and if they are to help Jews from abroad who settled in Central and South America in recent years rebuild their cultural and spiritual existence, Dr. Abraham Mibashan, president of the DAIA, central representative organization of Argentine Jews, said here today.

Dr. Mibashan has just arrived in New York to attend to two parleys: that of the board of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, and a meeting of leaders of affiliates of the World Jewish Congress.

Dr. Mibashan’s mission to the Claims Conference meeting is to seek additional funds for the establishment and staffing of seminaries for Jewish teachers and rabbis in Buenos Aires to serve the entire Latin American Jewish community. The first steps in the direction of the training of teachers have already been taken.

Argentina, the largest Jewish community in Latin America, is continuously receiving requests from the Latin American communities for assistance in obtaining Jewish teachers and rabbis, Dr. Mibashan explained, but is itself so undermanned in this respect that it cannot at present fill such requests. For a time, he noted, Israel was providing Jewish teachers, but of late the Jewish State’s internal needs have increased and it is unable to “export” teachers.

In such an atmosphere, the Argentine Jewish leader noted, assimilation has made great inroads and as many as 80 percent of the youth are uninterested in Judaism. To awaken and hold such interest, the community has attempted many projects but feels it must train more rabbis in a seminary modelled along the lines of Yeshiva University here and more teachers.

One effort to promote Judaism among the youth, he noted, is the five or six books his own publishing house puts out annually on the subject. They are chiefly translations from the Hebrew and Yiddish.

Commenting specifically on the Argentine Jewish community, which is expanding rapidly in institutional and cultural directions, Dr. Mibashan noted it had few external problems. Anti-Semitic movements as such do not exist now, he said, and the largest part of the anti-Jewish propaganda being circulated originates in Sweden or with the Ku Klux Klan in the United States. When the German-language pro-Nazi sheet Der Weg was forced to move from the country, he continued, the last major anti-Semitic propaganda source dried up.

On the government level, Dr. Mibashan said, the President, Dr. Arturo Frondizi, is “attentive” to Jewish needs and aims. In addition, there are more Jews in high provincial and national governmental posts in Argentina than ever before in the country’s history, he said.

To illustrate President Frondizi’s friendship for an understanding of the Jews, Dr. Mibashan recalled that when a delegation of Jewish leaders, including himself, were received in audience by the President and explained their close ties with the State of Israel, the President said: “How can a son forget his father?”