Alberto Gerchunoff and the «Bridge» on the River Plate

St. Andrews Episcopal School (Bethesda, MD)

The personal and geographic background of a writer is consciously or unconsciously reflected in his work. When experiences or expectations arising from such backgrounds come into conflict with the reality of the writer's actual condition, this literature may serve as the basis for the creation of a bridge to reconcile the myths or illusions of youth with the contemporary literary, political or cultural environment. Such an architect was Alberto Gerchunoff, who when faced with the contradictions of the vision of Argentina as a New Zion for the Jewish refugee from the Eastern European pogroms, and the reality of an indifferent, sometimes actively hostile, and at best tolerant, mainstream Argentina, endeavored to erect a bridge of cultural understanding to integrate the Jew as an intellectual and psychological equal into the new Argentine nationality. Gerchunoff's bridge on the River Plate brings to mind the equally valiant and seemingly unsuccessful attempts of Colonel Nicholson of the Bridge on the River Kwai fame to transcend the helpless situation of POW and apparent Japanese military superiority through the demonstration of superior British engineering, and moral and mental discipline. Both bridges foundered on the the indifference, non-comprehension or the hostility of the environment surrounding our protagonists. Gerchunoff's vision of fusing disparate cultural elements into a harmonious whole proved as evanescent a goal as Colonel Nicholson's dream of isolating British engineering skills and superior discipline from the reality of war.

While Gerchunoff first consciously declared himself an architect of cultural synthesis in 1906, his fictionalized, autobiographical stories of life on the Jewish colonias of the Argentine provinces, published as Los gauchos judíos in 1910, and his personal autobiography of 1914, indicate that the process had begun even earlier. The first chapter of Los gauchos judíos describes the dreary, Eastern European shehtl town of Tulcin, eternally covered with snow, where the young Gerchunoff listened as the village elders gathered to discuss the proposed immigration to Argentina (19-24). Here the somber Ashkenazi tradition combined with the wisdom and vitality of the Sephardic tradition of the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry, to conceive of Argentina as the New Zion. With the actual arrival of the Jewish immigrants in Buenos Aires, the process of synthesis accelerates. Gerchunoff graphically and romantically traces the rites of passage by which the Jewish immigrants pass from the restricted world of the European shehtl to the relative freedom of the agricultural colonies established by Baron Maurice Hirsch in the province of Entre Ríos. While the elders attempt to recreate the comforting, familiar ritual and the dress and isolation of their former life, the youth adapt easily to the freer ethic, dress and speech of their Argentine neighbors. The Spanish language, an isolating reality for the elders, becomes a vehicle of integration for the young who speak Yiddish to their elders and Spanish to their peers.

Both Gerchunoff's autobiography, Entre Ríos, Mi País, and Los gauchos judíos, abound with vignettes of the perceived harmonious acculturation. A contemporary Raquel tending Argentine cattle, becomes the reincarnation of a Biblical heroine, e.g., an Esther, a Rebecca, a Deborah or a Judith, tending her flock (LGJ 241). A love affair between a young female colonist and a local Argentine youth becomes a Judeo-Argentine «Song of Songs» (35). Even as Gerchunoff learned the Judaic tradition and Hebrew language in the cheder (Hebrew elementary school), he and other Jewish youths also cultivated the dress and attitudes of the Argentine prototype,

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the gaucho. Dressed in bombachas (wide pants), chambergo (wide brim hat) and riding boots, carrying bolas, and with a knife inserted in his wide gaucho belt, Gerchunoff absorbed the gaucho ethic, lovingly and graphically narrated in poetry and legend by an old veteran of the Argentine civil wars (Entre Ríos, 25). A Jewish colonist's wedding becomes a tri-cultural synthesis, with the Spanish, Argentine and Judaic traditions, forming a cultural bridge, thematically and stylistically linking Cervantes to the Sephardic tradition in an Argentine Bodas de Camacho (LGJ, 58-62).

The cultural synthesis even bridges the elders' linguistic isolation. The Argentine national day is observed with full patriotic ceremony, in Yiddish (LGJ 62-67). A non-Spanish speaking Jewish community leader spiritually communicates with his non-Yiddish speaking Argentine counterpart, transcending linguistic limitations in a common bond of mutual concerns and universal humanity (102-06).

But the figure par excellence of this successful cultural synthesis is the colony's poet, Favel Dulach. His bombachas, boots and sombrero de alas are a corollary to his long coat, sideburns, curls and beard of the Jewish scholar. He joyfully equates the noble, physical courage of the gaucho with the warlike courage of Israel's ancient warriors. It is he who coins the term, gaucho judío, even if the Jewish colonist were more accurately a chacarero (farmer) rather than a gaucho (81-85).

Despite the apparent harmony, however, two serious structural stresses threaten the viability of Gerchunoff's carefully-conceived cultural bridge. First is the senseless murder of Rabbi Abraham (Gerchunoff's real life father), killed by a drunken peon just before Passover (47-49). The second, is the automatic presumption of guilt against a Jewish colonist accused wrongly of horse theft, who elects to pay the fine rather than lose time from the harvest in a lengthy court appearance; such action deemed a de facto confession of guilt. Fearing structural collapse, Gerchunoff must sacrifice a portion of the structure for the good of the whole. With a «Christ» -like compassion, he forgives the accusers their prejudice, and is confident that the unjustly- accused colonist will be vindicated when Jewish and Catholic rites combine to jointly celebrate the Argentine Bicentennial in the national cathedral, signaling the end of anti-Semitic attitudes in Argentina (LGJ 78-81). Argentina had become Gerchunoff's psychological as well as physical homeland, a land that had assimilated his original ethnic origins and had made him truly Argentine, as he proudly proclaims in Entre Ríos, Mi País (26).

Despite the overwhelming ascendance of his argentinidad, Gerchunoff maintained close emotional and intellectual ties with the Jewish heartland, even after the family's removal to Buenos Aires, fleeing the tragic memory of his father's death. The series of articles which later served as the basis for Los gauchos judíos, began appearing as early as 1908 in the local newspapers. Other articles dealing with a wide spectrum of Jewish intellectual, artistic and political life were published regularly from 1915 until his death in 1950. These articles were collected and published posthumously in 1951 under the title of El pino y La palmera and provide an interesting insight into the changing nature of Gerchunoff's literary attempt to bridge any perceived or real inconsistencies between the theory and the practice of argentinidad by the mainstream society.

As Gerchunoff moves from childhood to adulthood, he redesigns his theory of cultural synthesis. Initially embracing total assimilation into the Argentine mainstream to form a new Argentine nationality, he responds to the reality of his environment by revising his original concept to support the Jew as a distinct cultural element within a multi-ethnic Argentine identity.

In his earliest statement on the cultural bridge, expressed in 1906 in the article, Los judíos, Gerchunoff is an implicit assimilationist. He is almost euphoric about the inevitability of the fusion of the fine but tortured face of Jacob and his female counterpart with the robust but cosmopolitan features of the native Argentine. This crisol de razas (melting pot of races) is an inexorable process which can only prove more effective in resolving the so-called Jewish «problem», than all the wealth of the Rothschilds and Vanderbilts. The Jews should seek their New Zion in Argentina, where even the empty spaces of the province of Chubut are preferable to the harsh sterile land of the eastern Sultan (P&P, 13-15). In the article, «El problema de la nacionalidad y la política del Idioma» in 1924, he counsels Argentine nationalists not to fear nor restrict the waves of immigration which the nation needs to insure her progress. He reassures them that all the distinct cultural traditions of these diverse populations will be reduced to a single Argentine expression (Arg., País de Adven., 119-20). The crisol de razas continues apace.

The cultural bridge is even further reinforced by the special Judeo-Spanish linguistic affinity.

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In «Los judíos en la lengua Castellana» (1926), Gerchunoff affirms that the first Spanish poets were Jews, citing as Jewish pillars of this linguistic bridge; «El Judino», Don Francisco de Baena; the poet, Montoro; Fernando de Rojas of La Celestina fame; Rabbi Sem Tob of Carrión; and Fray Luis de León. Gerchunoff insists that the bridge enabled the Jewish heritage to endow the Spanish language with richness and originality of expression, while receiving Spanish expressiveness and lyricism in return. As the Jews had continued thinking and creating in Spanish during their long exile, the facility with which they had adapted to Spanish thought and expression in Argentina can be no surprise, since they were merely recovering the use of a language which had been theirs for centuries (P&P, 31-32).

A slight tilt toward the Jewish heritage surfaces in the article, «Semblanza de Schalom Aleichem» (1935), written as a prologue to a translation of the Yiddish writer's stories into Spanish by Salomon Resnick. While cross-cultural interaction persists in the comparing of Aleichem to Cervantes, Gerchunoff notes that instead of the pursuit of an illusory heroism, Aleichem's «hero» displays a loose, practical wisdom in which optimism and disillusionment alternate with faith and an amiable melancholy. While Tobias, the milkman, may lack the profound melancholy or tragedy of a Don Quijote, he does share a succession of absurd events, that are as true a reflection of life in the ghettoes of Eastern Europe as were Quijote's of the social and political atmosphere of XVI Century Spain. Gerchunoff pays tribute to Schalom Aleichem's special refinement and enrichment of Yiddish language and literature, and his immortalization of a ghetto life that he believed would soon disappear. And in a rare insight, revealing a weariness with straddling both sides of his cultural bridge, Gerchunoff confesses a deep need to submerge himself in the magic atmosphere of the ghetto after a long day of total identification with an almost universally-Christian city and nation (P&P, 49-52).

The rising tide of anti-Semitism in the River Plate region exposed further severe structural deficiencies, impelling Gerchunoff, for the first time, to publicly condemn the mainstream attitudes which seriously threatened his theory of cultural harmony. In a prologue to Ludwig Lewisohn's, Renacimiento de Israel (1935), Gerchunoff bitterly recalls various anti-Semitic personal and public acts which had effectively excluded the Jew from full participation in Argentine society. He cites the riots of 1919, the infamous Semana trágica, when inhabitants and property of the Jewish quarter of Buenos Aires were attacked by young Nationalist hoodlums, while the police idly stood by. He agonizes that such incidents had become the rule, encouraged by such authors as Hugo Wast, who in a prologue to his novel, El Kahal (an alleged cabal of Jewish financiers, engaged in an international conspiracy similar to that of the «Elders of Zion»), asserted that shouting, «Down with the Jews», was actually the patriotic affirmation of «Long Live the Nation». Gerchunoff then recalls the dictatorship of General Uriburu, when Jews were expelled from their university posts; excluded from or not promoted in any government post or scientific organization, if fortunate to keep their jobs. But in a desperate plea to save the listing structure, Gerchunoff calls upon the thinking Argentine to recognize the Jew as an indispensable element of, rather than a threat to, emerging Argentine nationalism. He insists upon the Jew's patriotism, and affirming that anti-Semitism is not indigenous but has been imported from abroad, is confident that the thinking Argentine will reject such injurious propaganda which only serves individual political ends (P&P, 75-81).

Cognizant of the contradictions between Jewish assimilation into a national identity and Argentine reality, a pragmatic Gerchunoff cautiously attempted to correct the structural defects in his design for the cultural integration of the Argentine Jew. «La emigración judía a la Argentina» (1939) acknowledges friction arising from the Jewish presence, and while admitting that integration would not be as inevitable as presumed, Gerchunoff is confident the Jew will ultimately assume his rightful role in the creation of the new Argentine nationality; a role lauded by the poet, Leopoldo Lugones, in his famous Ode of 1910 (P&P, 83, 99-102). He elaborates on this theme in «El espíritu judío en la Cultura Española» (1940), an almost desperate attempt to buttress his fragile bridge against the winds of Argentine anti-Semitism combining with those from Nazi Germany. Here he emphasizes the worth and the continuity of Jewish literary and philosophical contributions to Spanish letters, especially through the work of the conversos. He recalls the proud response of Fray Luis de León when accused by the Inquisition of having Jewish blood. He is reported to have replied that were it true, he was the greater Christian than his inquisitor, having twice Christian blood by inheriting the Jewish blood of Jesus (109). Turning again to the political

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scene, Argentine nationalists are again reassured on incorporating the Jew into the mainstream. The article, «Argentina», repeats the leitmotiv that the diverse cultural infusions of the immigrants would enhance not alter the innate Argentine nature, by combining to create an even nobler citizen and patriot (Arg, País de Aven. 119-20).

In 1944, the anti-Semitic winds which had earlier shaken Gerchunoff's proposed bridge now threatened its total collapse. Its architect now perceived that the implicit assimilationist design of his crisol de razas structure had become seriously flawed by the example of the Nazis' forcible rejection of the Jew as a German citizen and equal partner in the national construction of the Third Reich. In the lengthy article, «El problema judío», he modifies the form if not the intent of his bridge to become a multi-ethnic synthesis in lieu of a total assimilationist approach. He angrily asserts that while the Jew had been criticized for being unassimilable, even when he so wished, the Jew had been forcibly prevented from doing so, or de-assimilated when he had done so. The Jewish experience in Italy, Spain, Hungary, Romania, Germany and now, Argentina, had painfully demonstrated this. The Jew would always remain an alien «Jew» in a Christian land, despite generations of living there. Gerchunoff further questions why the Jew must assimilate at all to be considered a patriotic citizen? Assimilation has historically meant the religious and ethic de-personalization of the Jew. Why cannot the Jew be accepted as a full citizen and patriot, and still maintain his Jewish identity within the larger national structure (P&P 164-66)?

Modification notwithstanding, Gerchunoff's clings to his skeleton structure as a vehicle for synthesizing the Jewish and Spanish cultures. Now, however, the Jew is no longer compelled to submerge his heritage to create a new national character but can retain his distinct identity within a culturally-pluralistic nationalism. This new concept of cultural fusion is restated in 1945 in the article, «El Problema judío en la segunda Postguerra». Those Jews unable to adapt to the conditions in countries to which they had immigrated, should be permitted to emigrate to Palestine, the Jewish heart/homeland. Those who elected to remain, would form a distinct community within the larger national structure, enriching this national identity with the glorious heritage of the golden age of the Jews of Sefarad, or that of the indomitable ghetto dwellers of the Eastern European shehtls with whom Gerchunoff now fully identifies.

In his last published statement on anti-Semitism appearing in a rebuttal to an article in El tiempo of Bogotá (1949), a weary Gerchunoff unconsciously reveals that he, too, questions the viability of the cultural bridge over the River Plate that he had so long espoused. After noting some inaccuracies in the article, Gerchunoff ends his statement affirming that he has the painful honor of being Jewish and of having maintained his ethnic solidarity with all Jews who have suffered simply for being so; but who thereby have achieved greatness by knowing how to suffer in dignity and beauty, as great figures have historically suffered -from Socrates to Einstein (P&P, 189). It is a painful acknowledgement that the Jew still remains a Jew in even in the Argentine New Zion.

In light of post-Holocaust enlightenment, it would be easy to dismiss Gerchunoff's Judeo-Spanish cultural bridge as a naive, or self-serving attempt to justify Jewish inclusion into mainstream Argentine society, or as an exercise in self-deception akin to that of Colonel Nicholson in the River Kwai experience. The Argentine writer, Roberto Payró, asked Gerchunoff in 1910, where was the discontent of the Jewish colonists in Los gauchos judíos, when one is forced to pay for a horse he did not steal and is implicitly judged guilty for electing to harvest a crop over losing time in a court appearance (DAVAR, 201-02). Later, other angry, young Jewish Argentine writers, like David Viñas, would question how Gerchunoff could romantically project a harmonious Judeo-Argentine crisol de razas when Jews were being beaten in the streets and otherwise attacked at the time Los gauchos judíos appeared? For Viñas the tragic answer was the choice between irse (leaving) or el suicidio (El Apog. de la Olig, 136-37, 185). For Gerchunoff, his cultural bridge was the only alternative to the physical or psychological abandonment of the only homeland he had really known.

The question can be posed as to whether Gerchunoff's journey from assimilation to multiculturalism merely reflected a similar philosophical evolution on the subject of Jewish identity within the Argentine-Jewish community at the time. If we examine the works of other Argentine Jewish authors during the period of Gerchunoff's main literary activity (roughly from 1908 to his death in 1952) while the subject of anti-Semitism does appear, it is still within the context of the Jew as an Argentine just as any other, ethnic

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origin apart. Enrique Espinosa (Samuel Glusberg), while writing of anti-semitism in La levita gris (1924), yet in 1934 published Ruth y Noemí, depicting a more harmonious immigrant adaptation to the new land. César Tiempo (Israel Zeitlin), while uncompromising on Argentine anti-semitism in general, in the main his works reflected the Jew harmoniously adapting to life in the urban Argentine atmosphere, as in his cycle of Sabbath poetry, Libro para la pausa del sábado (1930). His nationally-acclaimed drama, Pan criollo (1937), has been interpreted as an acceptance of Jewish assimilation into the larger Argentine mainstream society. The dramatist, Samuel Eichelbaum, reflected some elements of anti-semitism and the conflict of Argentine Jewish identity in his plays, Nadie la conoció and El judío Aaron (1926). Yet in an introduction to his drama of the prototype of the Argentine turn-of-the-century compadrito, Un guapo del 900 (1940), Eichelbaum cites as his motivation for writing the play (the first of a series in the creation of a national theater which included Las aguas del mundo, Pájaro de barro, and Un tal Servando Gómez), the desire to prove that he was capable of depicting the Argentine reality, despite the quality of extranjerizante (foreigner) implied in his Jewish name, (10). The sharpest criticism of Argentine anti-semitism of that era appeared in the verse of Carlos M. Grunberg, Mester de judería (1940). Yet it is prefaced by a long introduction by Jorge Luis Borges emphasizing that the work should in no way be construed as an attack upon Argentine society since Grunberg was first and foremost, a loyal and patriotic Argentine. Naomi Lindstrom indeed notes that some of the poems appear to underline Grunberg's apparent belief that the then-current anti-semitism did not in the long-term «diminish the view of Argentina as the patria or homeland» (Jewish Issues in Argentine Literature, 21). While anti-semitism is acknowledged and decried, the primacy of Argentine identity is not questioned. It is only with Bernardo Verbitsky that the importance or the distinct role of Jewish identity within Argentine society receives a more critical and exhausting focus. With Es difícil empezar a vivir (1941), Verbitsky opens the discussion on the difficulty of maintaining or conciliating the Jewish identity with Argentine nationality, given the reality of anti-semitism. While the subject is explored, no resolution or solution is suggested and as Lindstrom notes, the novel is so circumspect that more than half the work transpires «before the Jewish subject matter ... receives more than passing treatment» (Jewish Issues, 80). No further discussion ensues from this work, as the silence which generally enveloped the Argentine literary community during the Perón era did not spare the Jewish Argentine writers, given the uneasy coexistence of the Jewish community with the pro-Nazi regime. Verbitsky was named editor in 1945 of DAVAR, the literary voice of the Sociedad Hebraica Argentina, and while editorial policy reflected a variety of Jewish issues, the question of Jewish identity did not appear as a topic for exhaustive discussion during this time.

This state of myopia changed after 1955, in the post-Peronist era, with the appearance of the withering social criticism initiated by Viñas and Sebreli, which continues unabated under the exhaustive analyses of Senkman and Sosnowski. The works of Rozenmacher, Rozitchner, Goloboff, and Szichman, mirror the intense literary preoccupation with the positive or negative role of the Jewish identity within the context of Argentine society. The authors cited are but a small sample of the many Argentine Jewish writers, who consciously or not, have sought and continue to search for a formula to accurately define the identity and role of the Jew within the Argentine nationality.

It is not surprising therefore that Gerchunoff, early in life as a refugee from the pogroms of Czarist Russia, had learned the necessity of a strategy for survival in the face of harsh reality. Unlike other immigrants to Argentina, there was no national home to which he could return. Argentine anti-semitism was a reality, the euphoria of assimilation into Argentine society emanating from the 1910 Centennial celebration, having dissipated in the often times hostile political and social environment. And concomitant with the physical need of a homeland, there was the psychological need to belong, somewhere. (The State of Israel, of course did not then exist.) This poignant desire is unconsciously revealed by Gerchunoff in his autobiography when he remembers his feeling of being different from his fellow Argentine students, and his overwhelming desire to be an Argentine like any other. The eagerly-awaited Argentine naturalization unfortunately could not confer the anticipated full social integration. The Jew continued to be avoided, ridiculed or at best, tolerated, as a less than an equal member of Argentine society. The exercise in cultural synthesis, from assimilation to multi-ethnicity, was Gerchunoff's intellectual response to a painful reality, an attempt through

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his writings to convince (at least the literate or educated Argentine) of the value of Jewish integration into the Argentine mainstream. From the comfort of post-Holocaust hindsight, we can easily perceive the naivete or romanticism inherent in Gerchunoff's misplaced faith that the age-old problem could be resolved by a formula whose success depended on the goodwill, objectivity and compassion of a dominant culture, inheritor of hostile, Spanish colonial attitudes toward the Jew. I submit that rather than a naive romantic, Gerchunoff was an optimistic pragmatist, akin to Aleichem's Tobias. Both were cognizant of the limitations and volatile nature of the society surrounding them, but the gift of life itself was too precious not to be fully explored and celebrated, if even at the cost of compromise. In Czarist Russia, Gerchunoff's life would have been more severely circumscribed, had he even survived the pogroms. In contrast, Argentina had given her immigrant son a good measure of national artistic recognition and acceptance, despite exhibiting at times a virulent anti-semitism.

Even in the relatively more liberal, social and political atmosphere of the United States, overt and subtle anti-semitism prevailed. Leo Frank, a young Jewish merchant, was lynched in 1915 for the alleged murder of a young girl (on testimony later proved to be false). Any reading of Irving Howe's, World of our Fathers, shows a United States equally unwilling to accord its Jewish immigrants full acceptance at the turn of the century. In 1944, even at the higher academic levels of our society, a study of anti-Semitism by various U.S. university professors, Jews in a Gentile World, advocated total assimilation as the only effective antidote to anti-semitism. To cease being a «cultural irritant», one author counseled Jewish leaders to discourage Jews from entering «over-populated» professions (e.g., public entertainment) where they were too visible, and seek out «underpopulated» ones. They were also admonished to curtail the formation of «special» Jewish organizations, even if it might work against the growth of Orthodox Judaisim (98-99, 145-47). Given the prevalence of such world-wide «liberal» attitudes, Gerchunoff's formula of cultural pluralism embodies a pragmatic approach to survival in an indifferent or hostile homeland.

It would, however, dishonor the life and work of Gerchunoff if his cultural bridge is simply viewed as a pragmatic response to anti-Semitism, as was Colonel Nicholson's to the breakdown in British POW morale and discipline. Both had actual pride in and love for the instrument(s) of their redemption as human beings. In his last work, Entre Ríos, Mi País, published posthumously in 1950, after reaffirming that a nation is not a chemical synthesis but the sum of its differences, Gerchunoff ends on a poignant yet jubilant note: «Soy de allá, amigos míos... Entre Ríos ... diste fondo a mi alma y en mi alma conservaste ... un rumor de cántico. Amigos míos, soy de allá» (58-59); even if some might cynically question this as a tactic to be accepted as truly from «there»). There can be no doubt of the deep emotion, love and gratitude Gerchunoff felt for the only homeland he had ever truly known, and which had nurtured and given him the opportunity to achieve national fame in Argentine letters. And in a final irony, Gerchunoff and the Colonel did indeed achieve their objectives. Both bridges do exist, whether in literary fiction or legend. Tourists still travel to Thailand looking for Colonel Nicholson's legendary bridge. And Gerchunoff's culturally-pluralistic bridge lives on, not only in his «intensely Argentine and authentically Jewish» (DAVAR#31-33, 156) life and work, but also in the works of Jewish writers for whom he unlocked the door to national recognition, i.e., Viñas, Eichelbaum, Tempo, Verbitsky, etc.

Final vindication of Gerchunoff's attempt to formulate a cultural bridge to incorporate the Jewish heritage as one of various components of a culturally-pluralistic national character is confirmed by the recent convening of the «Primer encuentro de escritores Judíos Latinoamericanos» in Buenos Aires in August 1986. The main theme evolved into the personal and literary experience of the Jewish writer «inserted» into the Latin-American reality, with the majority of the presentations and debates focusing on the personal details of the lives of the participants. In so doing, it was hoped to arrive at a consensus or to more accurately define what did or did not constitute a Judeo-Latin American writer. To confirm that Gerchunoff's search for an intellectual bridge to reconcile Jewish Argentine (the River Plate) cultural differences is still an elusive but current ethnic preoccupation, one only has to read the titles of some of the debates: «desarraigo y la Identidad Judía», «Pluralismo y la literatura judía», etc. Even some of the terms of the debates have a familiar ring, e.g, Sosnowski's thesis that the hyphen in the description, «Judeo-Latin American» should serve as a bridge to unite the identities on both sides of the hyphen rather than to assimilate one identity

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into the other -in effect, a restatement of Gerchunoff's theory of cultural pluralism, and an affirmation of the validity of his search for a cultural synthesis of the Judaic and Argentine traditions.

Barylko/Bortnik, et. al. Pluralismo e identidad (ensayos). Buenos Aires: Mila, 1986.

Boulle, Pierre. The Bridge on the River Kwai. New York: Vanguard Press, 1952.

_____. Homenaje a la memoria de Alberto Gerchunoff. Buenos Aires: DAVAR, Nos. 31-33 (edited by the Sociedad Hebraica Argentina), 1951.

Eichelbaum, Samuel. El judío Aaron. B.A.: Edic. Talia, 1926.

_____. Nadie la conoció nunca (1926). B.A.: Carro de Tespis,1956.

_____. Un guapo del 900 (1940). B.A.: E.C.A., 1967.

Espinosa, Enrique (Samuel Glusberg). La levita gris. B.A.: B.A.B.E.L., 1924.

_____. Ruth y Noemí. B.A.: B.A.B.E.L., 1934.

Gerchunoff, Alberto. Argentina, país de avenimiento. Buenos Aires: Losada, 1952.

_____. Entre Ríos, mi país. Buenos Aires: Futuro, 1950.

_____. Los gauchos judíos. Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1964. (LGJ).

_____. El pino y la palmera. Buenos Aires: Sociedad Hebraica Argentina, 1952.

Goloboff, Gerardo Mario. Caballos por el fondo de los ojos. Barcelona: Planeta, 1976.

Graeber, Isaque and Britt, Stewart H. Jews in a Gentile World. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1942.

Grunberg, Carlos M. Mester de Judería. (Prólogo de Jorge Luis Borges). B.A.: Editorial Argiropolis, 1940.

_____. Hispamérica 16.48 (December 1987): 132 38.

Howe, Irving. World of Our Fathers. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1976.

Lindstrom, Naomi. Jewish Issues in Argentine Literature. Columbia, Mo.: Univ. of Missomi Press, 1989.

Rozenmacher, German. Requiem para un viernes a la noche. Buenos Aires: Talia, 1971.

Rozitchner, Leon. Ser Judío. Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1967.

Sebreli, Juan José. La cuestión judía en la Argentina. B.A.: Tiempo Contemporáneo, 1973.

Senkman, Leonardo. La identidad judía en la literatura argentina. B.A.: Ediciones Pardes, 1983.

Szichman, Mario. Crónica falsa. B.A.: Jorge Álvarez, 1969.

_____. Los judíos del Mar Dulce. B.A.-Caracas: Galerna-Síntesis Dosmil, 1971.

_____. La verdadera crónica falsa. B.A.: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1972.

Sosnowski, Saúl. La orilla inminente, escritores judíos argentinos. B.A.: Editorial Legasa, 1987.

Tiempo, César (Israel Zeitlin). Libro para la pausa del sábado. B.A.: Manuel Gleizer, 1930.

_____. Pan criollo. B.A.: Edic. Dintel/Argentores/ Carro de Tespis, 1968.

Verbitsky, Bernardo. Es difícil empezar a vivir. B.A.: Losada, 1941. Fabril, 1963.

Viñas, David. El apogeo de la oligarquía. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veinte, 1975.

Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 75, Number 2, May 1992