ABSTRACT
The Yiddish language and its cultural by-products were central components that shaped the Jewish identity of the Ashkenazi communities in Argentina and Mexico. It was a means by which wide segments of the Jewish public-Zionist and non-Zionist, socialist and bourgeois, secular and religious-expressed their Jewishness. The Jewish Colonization Association, founded and funded by Baron Maurice de Hirsch, created Jewish agricultural colonies in Argentina. The left-wing movements held a completely different view on the issue of national languages, one that was influenced by their attitude to Jewish nationalism and to the cultural and religious heritage of Judaism. Three ideological movements comprised the left wing in Argentine Jewry: Progressives, Bundists, and Left Poalei Zion. Unlike the Progressives, Bundists and members of Left Poalei Zion considered Yiddish to be an important national cultural asset, and therefore an educational objective in its own right.
