ABSTRACT
In economic terms, the Jewish experience in Latin America has been more successful, compared with that of native populations. The individual and collective social mobility of Jews has been high, leading to impressive proportions of professionals and entrepreneurs in the Jewish community. The Jewish experience in Latin America is interesting when compared with Jewish experiences in the United States and Israel, cases with differing relationships between Jewish identity and national identity. In the United States, Jewish identity and national identity are discrete and unrelated. Latin American Jewish communities are also marked by a far more conservative religious tradition than are their counterparts in the United States or Israel. Assimilation to the host culture is more likely to result in the severing of ties to the Jewish community, and intermarriage with non-Jews has a similar result. The isolation of Latin American Jewish communities may also reflect those features of Latin American politics that have precluded the emergence of Jews as politicians.
