Teachers, students, and colleagues have left their imprints on this book. Through dialogues, mutual readings, discussions, and collaboration, they expanded my world. In the introductory essay, I give an account of the cognitive and existential trajectory that has delineated my work, and I recognize their role in my research journey. Thus, our social sciences reaffirm their own inherent sociability as a collective endeavor, whose ultimate product and responsibility, however, relies on me. Making explicit the scope and meaning of collegiality and the academic frameworks in which I developed my work is an expression of intellectual gratitude.
My recognition to that generation of intellectual immigrants who brought their knowledge to the shores of the Río de la Plata, shaping a new space for Jewish culture and establishing the Jewish Teachers Seminar at the amia, where I experienced my adolescent encounter with Judaism. They offered the analytical gaze my previous Jewish schooling couldn’t offer while focusing on planting the seeds of the affective links.
That amia building symbolizes the richness of thoughts and the tragedy of destruction.
Haim Avni, S.N. Eisenstadt, and Shlomo Avineri, bright minds and committed human beings at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, were central in my formative years as a social scientist.
Years later, Sergio DellaPergola became a privileged interlocutor and collaborator in that Jerusalem environment and beyond, contributing with his rigorous analyses to better understand, among other fundamental questions, not only the sociodemographic profile but also the utopias of the Jewish world.
My stays at the Hebrew University contributed not only to cross countries and regions, but mainly to cross disciplinary borders and helped overcome what Ulrich Beck rightly called methodological nationalism. I have benefited from the wider circles of a community of researchers in contemporary Judaism and Latin America. Leonardo Senkman has opened a path of lucid collaborations on different initiatives and projects.
Fifteen years of the Programa de Estudios Judaicos at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico, in collaboration with the Jerusalem Program for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization founded by Prof Moshe Davis, became a unique space for creative and plural thought. Built on visiting professors, it became a unique nucleus for the professionalization of Jewish education and the development of young academic researchers in Mexico.
A special thanks to Katelyn Chin, a pillar of our series, who personally supported me with her unyielding faith that this book would reach her skilled hands. To the Brill team, particularly Katerina Sofianou and Karthick J, my biggest thanks for their sustained work.
Crossing borders has always been fruitful. I am deeply grateful to Michel Wieviorka, with whom, over these years, France and Mexico became intellectual territories for collaboration.
Being president of the Association for the Social and Scientific Study of Jewry has allowed me to enhance and further develop the insights of a comparative approach that explains the singularity and shared traits of our disciplines and milieus.
Yael Siman has been a talented and empathetic research companion and collaborator. I wholeheartedly thank her for her extended input and joint works, and our collaborative article with Daniela Gleizer.
The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México is my generous home for years of teaching and research. My colleagues at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, the Graduate Program I headed, the Center for Political Studies, and the Center for Multidisciplinary Social Theory have allowed me to develop a broad vision of the social sciences.
My courses and seminars in political theory and political sociology have always confronted me with the lucid questions of students who have made our dialogue a practice of scientific knowledge. Hundreds of voices have encouraged me. To all of them, my thanks. Many of them became my young colleagues. A special mention to Federico Saracho, whose innovative thought has accompanied me for the last years, to Perla Kane, Betty Mendlovick, and Adjani Tovar, who followed and broadened my research interests, and many more.
Special mention deserves several archives and their fascinating worlds. Among them, The Zionist Central Archives of Jerusalem, The Washington State Archives, The Mexican Archivo de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, the Mexican Archivo General de la Nación, and several community and personal archives. I want to underscore the yiwo Archive in New York, where, for the first time, I discovered valuable boxes with pictures that reflected the Mexican and Latin American Jewish world—including the historical one of Leon Trotsky with Jewish journalists in Mexico, where he declared that he would see with the most positive eyes a national solution to the Jewish plight. This discovery and subsequent images of immigrants who, disregarding their
Those pictures led me to search for more human and subjective testimonies of the actors in other sources. While discovering similarities between different communities in Latin America, I want to underline a relevant and moving one: my own father’s speech in Argentina’s House of Representatives, mobilizing the country’s support for the Partition of Palestine.
To my team, which accompanies me in the fascinating and demanding Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales (Mexican Journal of Political and Social Sciences), I sincerely recognize their solid and efficient presence: the long-time committed and caring Iraís García as well as Alan Rico, assistant editor, Miranda Coranges, and Yessica Moraflores.
This book wouldn’t have reached its final form without Elizabeth Villanueva’s intelligence and highly sophisticated technical support. Her active and patient work became essential to it. I profoundly and unconditionally thank her.
Daniel Liwerant has been the most patient and supportive life companion. I have unlimited love and appreciation for his caring and generous nature. We share our deepest ties with Jerusalem, where we met as students.
To my sons, Mark and Gad, their families and my five grandchildren—Eitan, Hannah, Anat, Ezequiel, and Talia—thanks for their warmth, and hoping they will find interest in my world of interests.