From Distant Lands
Peretz Hirshbein
1914
The Longing for the Jewish Street
[ . . . ] Jewish immigration to South America has now been going on for fully twenty-five years, primarily to Argentina. This immigration began with such energy and so much enthusiasm, that when you come here and find that the final result is groaning and nostalgia for the old home, it makes you sad.
There are plenty of reasons for this. I am speaking now not about the [agricultural] colonists, but about the city of Buenos Aires and its Jewish quarter.
I am not speaking of the great mass, in its thousands—that speaks Yiddish, and perhaps only Yiddish—who deals in human flesh and human blood.1 I am speaking of the small group of Jews who were torn out of the authentic heart of Jewish life and who brought idealism in their hearts with them. I am speaking of those who still stand with their faces turned to the distant, far-off old home and with their backs to the country where they eat their bread.
It is clear that the majority of the urban Jews here came with the thought that they would never even see the city. These are people that came to be colonists and now they wear out their feet on the streets of Buenos Aires.
This is because the JCA [Jewish Colonization Association] has in recent years settled, on average, a very small percent of the recently arrived immigrants in [agricultural] colonies. And even in the best of times perhaps one in ten is able to acquire land. Taking into account that a great many of those who managed to achieve their goal ultimately abandoned their land and the benevolence of the JCA in order to find their fortunes in the city, it is understandable why the Jewish population in the city carries such strong feelings of dissatisfaction in its heart.
A Jew sits in a doorway with a little box and sells cigarettes (a trade the Jews have taken over). He is a former colonist, or at least he came here to be a colonist.
A Jew goes knocking from door to door with a package of merchandise.
“I was supposed to be a colonist!”
A Jew walks along carrying around strips with shoelaces for sale.
“I was supposed to be a colonist!”
A Jew walks around with a downcast face and does nothing.
“I was supposed to be a colonist!” [ . . . ]
The Builders of a Jewish Future
With bent backs and gray beards, their faces wrinkled and brown, their gaze confident and proud, they stride across their fields with resolute steps. These are the first Jews from Russia who went all the way to Argentina to find their fortunes. [ . . . ]
One of them starts to tell his story like this: [ . . . ]
“When we arrived in Buenos Aires, they did not want to let us into the country, because they took us for ‘captains,’ that is, dealers in ‘white slavery.’2 But the captain [of the ship] showed our receipts for the land we had bought and we were at once allowed to disembark. However, it was explained to us, the land we had bought in Paris had been settled for a long time. Our money will be returned to us, but we will be given no land. As we were later told, the Minister of Agriculture figured that it would be a danger to have Jews in one place, since Jews are capable only of dealing in ‘living merchandise.’ Therefore it was better that they should be scattered and have less power. We found ourselves without any support.
“So we went off into the city of Buenos Aires looking for Jews. Finally we found three Jews who were gold merchants. One was called Lambrett, a German Jew, the second, Hochenstein, a Romanian Jew, and the third was called Moritz Hildesheimer, also a German Jew. The three Jews, very decent people, were able to find a certain proprietor of a lot of land, by the name of Pedro Palacios. (His land now belongs to the JCA.) He told us to choose a group of people to travel and have a look at the land. We had to ride some twenty hours from Buenos Aires on the railway line, still under construction at the time, from Buenos Aires to Tucumán.
“When our Jews saw so much land on all sides, land that would cost only twenty-five pesos an acre, they were overjoyed. They had no idea that at that time you could have gotten an acre of land there for two or three pesos. On August 28, 1889, we signed a contract with Mr. Palacios. He sent us right away to the Palacios Station, named for him. He also undertook to provide us with necessities at his expense. Since there were no houses there yet, we were housed in a big tin pavilion near the station that was still under construction. In the pavilion we were cooped up for six whole weeks. Once a month we were sent sacks of rotten corn and flour, full of worms, until were finally sent to our campo (field).”
Notes
[The reference here is to the common awareness of Buenos Aires as a center of prostitution or sex work in which Jews of East European background played a major role at all levels. Many, including Hirshbayn, deemed this situation to be one involving a great deal of compulsion and exploitation.—Eds.]
[The reference here is to the locution “the white slave trade,” a term common across the transatlantic public spheres of the era that envisioned the involvement of East European Jewish migrants in prostitution as a highly organized enterprise driven and maintained largely by compulsion. Historians are uncertain as to how accurate this view was, but it permeated discourse about Jews and sex work in the era and was of great moral and social concern to many Jewish observers.—Eds.]
Credits
Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.
