Rabbi Warns About Danger Facing Lating American Jews

Rabbi Marshall Meyer, founder and president of the Seminario Rabbinico Latino Americana in Buenos Aires, warned that “If anything will do away with Latin American Jewry, it is not going to be anti-Semitism but internal dissension, leading to stagnation and disintegration.” He expressed this view here last week at a special meeting of the leadership of the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism.

Meyer, a working rabbi in Argentina for the past 18 years and a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, acknowledged that there is “a great deal of anti-Semitism in Argentina which is not, happily, the policy of the national government.” Anti-Semitism, he said is spread by various anti-Semitic publications which are funded by three sources: the “Arab League, local fascist and anti-Semitic groups and international and anti-Semitic monies. However, this material is monitored and appropriate responses are made by responsible local organizations specializing in this area.”

Meyer asserted that “far more important than the problem of external anti-Semitism is the need to have Jews accept each other in creative endeavor and mutual responsibility.” He noted that this acceptance was lacking in the separate Jewish communities in Argentina: Sephardim, Ashkenazim and the two major German groupings who seldom work on a cooperative basis.

“Jewish apathy and indifference,” Meyer said, “is evident in many ways. In the Argentine hinterland, it is estimated that there is up to 80 percent assimilation. In the 18 years that I have been there, some Jewish communities have completely disappeared.” Synagogue attendance is on the decrease, he said, while membership in Jewish sports clubs and community centers is rising. He attributed the malaise in Jewish life to a lack of enlightened spiritual leadership and the absence of a wider involvement of Jewish intellectuals in leadership roles dating back to the early years of Jewish immigration into Latin America.

SOME HOPEFUL SIGNS

Meyer noted some of the steps instituted under his leadership in the past two decades in the effort to reverse the trend toward Jewish “self-suicide.” These include publication of prayer books in Hebrew and Spanish, with additional readings to make them more relevant to the contemporary scene; the publication of contemporary Judaica in Spanish; the establishment of the largest scientific Jewish library in South America, a day school and a day and evening high school; and Ramah Camps. Most significant, he said, is that the Seminario has already graduated Spanish-speaking, modern trained rabbis who today serve congregations in Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, Brazil and Argentina. Additionally, students from the Seminario serve congregations on the High Holidays throughout Central and South America.

While citing the close ties of Latin American Jewry to Israel, Meyer decried the little contact with American Jewry. He urged American Jews to become more concerned with the problems and needs of their Latin American counterparts. He called on American Jews “to visit South America, to set up tours which would explore areas of specific Jewish interest in Latin America, and to read and learn more about what is happening in Latin America.”