Book Reviews / Nationai Period y27

interclass and interethnic bliss to embattled descriptions of struggles for space, material
goods, and recognition.
Freidenberg's The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho: Villa Clara and the Construction of
Argentine Identity is an important contribution to tbe social bistory of rural communities
in Latin America. It will be illuminating for scbolars of Latin American immigration and
for tbose interested in multiethnic communities. Tbe maps, graphs, and photographs
that illustrate tbe book and its literary references and oral bistory interviews open it up
as well to a more general reading public.
MONICA SZURMUK, Instituto Mora, Mexico
DOI 10.1215/00182168-1416837
Crossing Borders, Claiming a Nation: A History of Argentine Jewish Women,
By SANDRA MCGEE DEUTSCH. Durbam, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
Pbotographs. Maps. Appendix. Notes. Bibliograpby. Index, xvi, 377 pp. Paper, $23.95.
Clotb, $84.95.
In 1932, blonde, 18-year-old Ana Rovner became Miss Once, named for a Buenos Aires
neigbborhood with a considerable Jewisb population. Sbe then became Miss Capi-
tal, hoping to become Miss Argentina and enter tbe Miss Universe contest. Although
Rovner did not refer to her Jewishness, her background was never a secret. A couple of
years later. President Agustn P. Justo attended a solo performance by Berta Singerman
at tbe Teatro Coln, the temple of elite porfewo culture. Singerman, who had begun her
career in Yiddish tbeater, acquired national and international fame for her recitations.
At the peak of her career, she performed for 70,000 people in Crdoba. These anecdotes
illustrate tbe visibility of Jewisb-Argentine women in botb popular and high cultures
in 1930s Argentina, precisely at a time of growing nationalism and xenophobia in botb
Europe and Latin America.
In tbe masculine public space of Argentina during the first half of the twentieth
century, more than a few Jewish women participated in Socialist, Anarchist, Commu-
nist, or union activities, or worked toward the establishment of a Jewish home in Pales-
tine. Beyond comprising the largest Jewish women's group, the Organizacin Sionista
Femenina Argentina (OSFA) also became the largest Jewish group in this country.
In this pioneering book on Argentine Jewisb women, Sandra McGee Deutsch ana-
lyzes a wide variety of sites, botb in tbe Argentine countryside as well as in tbe cities,
where Jewish women interacted with Jews of different origins and non-Jews alike. Very
little has been written about the history of immigrant women of any ethnic background
and tbeir descendants in Latin America, therefore this remarkable volume sbould be
of interest to anybody interested in tbe immigrant societies of tbis continent and tbeir
bybrid identities. By putting women at the center of the stage, the focus is not on insti-
tutions and discourses but on tbe daily lives of many individuals witb a variety of back-
grounds and trajectories.
y22 HAHR / November
Studies of Jewish women in Latin America have too often focused on prostitutes or
novelists. Indeed, Argentine Jewish prostitution is prohably the aspect of Jewish women's
lives that has attracted most attention on the part of scholars, writers, and filmmakers.
Deutsch does not ignore the disproportionate number of Jewish prostitutes in Buenos
Aires until the early 1930s, hut she is much more interested in exploring the ways i n'
which Jewish women crossed many borders and how they negotiated the boundaries
between private and professional lives and between the respectable and disreputable.
The eight chapters in this volume deal with the fundamental roles played by Jewish
women in all aspects of rural and urban societies, in both the domestic and the public
spheres. Women transmitted linguistic, culinary, musical, and other kinds of heritage to
their children and thus created a kind of ethnic enclave in their homes. At the same time,
the gradual adoption of local customs, food, and manners transformed these homes into
Argentine ones. In the streets, schools, and workplaces, Jewish women contributed to the
formation of argentinidad. As to racial relations. Deutsch concludes that, although not
always successful, "[a] spectrum of Jewish women, ranging from colonists to prostitutes,
claimed whiteness by setting themselves apart from criollos" (p. 244).
At any rate, as students and teachers, in the liberal professions or political activi-
ties, through human rights groups or Zionist organizations, Jewish Argentine women
fought against exclusion within the Jewish community and without, and demanded to be
an integral part of Argentine society. Deutsch correctly points out that "even as Jewish
women aided their communities and the nascent state of Israel, they highlighted their
Argentine identities and expanded the sense of who belonged to the nation" (p. 235).
Attention is given in the book to both working- and middle-class women, Ashke-
nazi and Sephardic alike. Too many studies have tended to overemphasize the supposed
separation between Jews of Ashkenazi and Sephardic origins, as if there was hardly any
contact between them in their daily lives. By contrast. Deutsch points to several contact
zones between members of the two groups, such as their participation in Zionist and
philanthropic associations.
Unlike many studies on the Jewish experience in Argentina, anti-Semitism is
not a main axis of discussion here. Deutsch is right to point out that, except at certain
moments, Jewish women in Argentina "experienced relatively little anti-Semitism until
the 1930s, although their status and race were ambiguous" (p. 10).
Based on a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, written documents and
oral history, this book is highly recommended to anyone interested in Latin American
ethnic studies or in the history of women in this region. It will be particularly helpful to
students and scholars of Jewish Latin America.
RAANAN REIN, Tel Aviv University
DOI 10.1215/00182168-1416846
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