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BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — Up till the COVID-19 pandemic, the Jews of Córdoba, Argentina’s second-largest Jewish group, had been on observe to do what so many different communities all over the world have performed lately: Open a museum dedicated to showcasing native Jewish life and historical past.
However COVID introduced an array of logistical and monetary challenges that proved too arduous to beat. So the umbrella group behind it made one other frequent pivot — and made the challenge solely digital.
Going digital “was a brand new problem, however it was additionally stuffed with prospects. For instance, the flexibility to be interactive and likewise the chance to incorporate new materials, paperwork, photographs, with out a bodily limitation,” stated Marcelo Polakoff, senior rabbi of the Masorti Centro Unión Israelita synagogue, Córdoba’s major temple.
Launched final month by the Centro Unión Israelita — which consists of the synagogue and a separate cultural group — the digital “museum” features a timeline of Córdoba’s Jewish historical past; a 360-degree panoramic tour of the synagogue; explainers on Jewish rituals and holidays; a worldwide map concerning the locations the place Córdoba’s Jewish immigrants got here from; testimony from a neighborhood Holocaust survivor; and an interactive map of the Jewish websites in Córdoba metropolis (Córdoba is the title of each a province of over 1,000,000 folks and its largest metropolis), which embrace an outside Israel Sq. and a monument to Anne Frank monument.
The museum’s director, Florencia Magaril, stated that loads of the content material comes from paperwork and objects beforehand discovered within the basement of the synagogue.
“Now the objects and the file, the entire historical past, is out there on-line,” she stated.
The 360-degree synagogue view and an archive web page, stuffed with photographs and audiovisual recordings from the group through the years, have confirmed common, Magaril stated — particularly as a result of the positioning is aimed toward each Jews and non-Jewish guests, the latter being fascinated by the synagogue inside. However one other enjoyable part has stolen the present: the “Idishometer,” a quiz on Yiddish phrases and their Spanish translations.
This reporter solely answered 67% of the solutions appropriately, so the system stated “you want much more knishes and visits to your bubbe, however you might be studying fairly nicely.”
The quiz is consultant of one thing Córdoba residents are identified for: an excellent humorousness. They’re generally known as a festive and humorous folks, from their well-known fashion of music (the playful cuarteto style) to their favourite drink (the fernando, a mixture of the Italian Fernet liquor and cola). Even their consultant in parliament, Luis Juez, is an envoy of types for his or her humorous tradition.
Córdoba’s Jews are an integral a part of the gang — Centro Unión Israelita President Hugo Waitman boasted that the synagogue’s two rabbis are “very humorous folks.” The digital museum hyperlinks to among the congregation’s goofy movies from through the years.
“We don’t have a selected station about humor, however sure, the attribute of being humorous folks is current within the ‘idishometer’ and likewise in the entire playful idea of the museum,” Magaril stated.
The museum idea originated in 2015, because the group, now a various mixture of round 8,000 folks, celebrated an approximate centennial. The realm’s first immigrants arrived between 1900 and 1915, stated Waitman, who doubles as a historian of Córdoba Jewry.
The congregation started researching their very own historical past, monitoring how some Jews who arrived on the port of Buenos Aires traveled over 400 miles northwest to the realm stuffed with pure sources, inexperienced land, our bodies of water and mountains. They printed a doc outlining the historical past, however agreed that there was potential for extra, and room to pay tribute to their ancestors.
“After the century celebration, the members agreed that we wanted to have a museum, specifically to pay respect to the immigrants that got here with out talking the language,” Waitman stated.
German Simon Ostwald is believed to be the primary Córdoban Jew, arriving in 1870. Twenty years later, eight full Jewish households arrived: 4 from Russia, one from Austria, two from Spain and one from Italy. It’s estimated that, at the start of the twentieth century there have been a complete of 35 folks.
The Centro Unión Israelita communal group was based in 1906, and two years later got here a Hebrew college. The primary synagogue was inaugurated in 1916, and the primary Jewish cemetery in 1923.
The web museum’s timeline additionally recollects that the primary ever girl within the province’s total historical past — Jewish or non-Jewish — to earn a college diploma was a Jew. Margarita Zatzkin, who immigrated from Odessa at age 7, graduated with a pharmacy diploma in 1905, incomes a medical diploma three years later (the primary girl from Córdoba to do this as nicely).
Albert Einstein can be a part of the museum. Its timeline contains photographs of his go to to the group as a part of a visit to Argentina in 1925.
The timeline doesn’t skip over darkish occasions both, resembling an explosives assault on the synagogue on October 18, 1945.
Polakoff famous that Córdoba, a minimum of in relation to different Jewish communities all over the world, has not ever seen excessive charges of antisemitism.
“I at all times go strolling with my kippah and by no means have any unhealthy experiences,” stated Polakoff, who moved from Buenos Aires to Córdoba 20 years in the past. “Perhaps one of many causes is the work that we now have performed with Christians and Muslims, right here selling coexistence and good relations, in a really seen method.”
In an instance of that work, 30 leaders of various non secular traditions from Latin America and the Caribbean signed in 2017 what was referred to as the “Córdoba Declaration,” figuring out the area as an space of interreligious coexistence. It was an initiative of COMIPAZ, the primary formal interfaith committee in Argentina.
The main target of the museum is equally on brighter issues. Issues just like the “Idishometer” take advantage of impression on non-Jews seeking to find out about Jewish tradition, the museum’s leaders say.
“We predict we give our group every thing inside our attain to consolation them, and we search that our group be good, and this contains happiness, humor and pleasure,” Waitman stated.
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