Latin American Jewry: History and Culture

A journey through five centuries of Jewish life in the Americas, from the impact of the Spanish Inquisition and the crypto-Jewish diaspora that came along with the 1492 expulsion to the “shtetl” and Ottoman immigrations in the early 20th century, the struggle for social justice, the rise of anti-Semitism and “La Shoah,” the dilemmas of identity, the reaction to Israeli-Palestinian relations, religious awakening, global and state terrorism, and the survival of linguistic and cultural groups (Yiddish, Ladino, indigenous and immigrant languages). The course is a response to a broader investigation of Jewish history and culture that shamelessly ignores the Hispanic world in all its complexity. This unique, underappreciated civilization is essential to understanding the birth of the Haskalah or Jewish modernity and the very contemporary notion of the diaspora as well as the Sephardic-Ashkenazi divide. Likewise, it is nearsighted to look at the progression of Hispanic history and culture without appreciating the transformative role of Jews in it, from the age of Yehuda Halevi to Columbus, Jorge Isaac, Alberto Gerchunoff, Jacobo Timerman, Clarise Lispector, Moacyr Scliar, and others. The principal countries explored include Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, and Spain as the European “fountainhead.”

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American, and Latino Cultures at Amherst College, publisher of Restless Books, host of NPR’s podcast In Contrast, and a regular contributor to the New York Times en Español. An international bestselling author, his books include On Borrowed Words (2000), Spanglish (2002), Dictionary Days (2010), and Quixote (2015). Among his graphic novels are Latino USA: A Cartoon History (2000), El Iluminado (2012), Angelitos (2017), and an adaptation of Don Quixote of La Mancha (2018). He is the editor of, among others, The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories (1998), The Schocken Book of Sephardic Literature (2008), Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (2011), Becoming Americans (2013), and Oy Caramba!: An Anthology of Jewish Stories from Latin America (2017). His work, adapted into theater, TV, film, and radio, has been translated into twenty languages.

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