Taking Root

In these essays, Latin American women of Jewish descent, from Mexico to Uruguay, recall their coming of age with Sabbath candles and Hebrew prayers, Ladino songs and merengue music, Queen Esther and the Virgin of Guadeloupe. Rich and poor, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, Jewish immigrant families searched for a new home and identity in predominantly Catholic societies. The essays included here examine the religious, economic, social and political choices these immigrant families have made, and continue to make, as they forge Jewish identities in the New World. Marjorie Agosin has gathered narratives and testimonies that reveal the immense diversity of Latin-American Jewish experience. These essays, based on first- and second-generation immigrant experience, describe differing points of view and levels of involvement in Jewish tradition. In "Taking Root", Agosin presents us with a contemporary and vivid account of the Jewish experience in Latin America. This book documents the sadness of exile and loss, but also a fierce determination to maintain Jewish traditions. This is Jewish history, but it is also part of the untold history of Brazil, Argentina, El Salvador, Ecuador, Chile, Peru and all of Latin America. The author is a winner of the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor, 2001.