MONTREAL — Montreal is not likely to receive more Jewish immigrants from Argentina in any significant number for the foreseeable future, according to the Buenos Aires rabbi who was the unofficial liaison between Jewish Immigrant Aid Services (JIAS) here and Argentine Jews interested in emigrating to Canada.
Rabbi Rubén Saferstein, leader of the Dr. Max Nordau Synagogue, said the exodus of Argentine Jews has fallen off dramatically in the last couple of years since Argentina’s recovery from the economic crisis that reached its nadir between 1999-2002.
The economic and political situation is much improved today, he said, during a recent visit to Montreal, although many people have not returned to their former standard of living and there has been a worrisome deterioration in the social climate.
Federation CJA, with its agency JIAS, made a determined effort to attract Argentine immigrants to Montreal to shore up the declining Jewish community. Several hundred are believed to have settled here, mostly before 2005.
A significant number were members of Rabbi Saferstein’s congregation, or had been married there or been students of his.
Rabbi Saferstein, 50, was also the person the Winnipeg Jewish community turned to in the mid-1990s when it sought to offset the drop in its numbers, and many Argentine Jews were not comfortable with the regime of then-president Carlos Menem.
The Dr. Max Nordau Synagogue, a Conservative congregation of about 300 members in a middle-class Jewish neighbourhood, is where Montreal Jewish community officials made their pitches to Jews who were wondering what to do.
Among the visitors was Victor Goldbloom, who headed the effort to attract Jewish immigrants, and is now JIAS’s Montreal president. JIAS organized Rabbi Saferstein’s itinerary while in Montreal, his first visit to the city.
It was an opportunity to get re-acquainted with some former Buenos Aires residents.
Rabbi Saferstein has kept in contact with many since they left, and he said his impression is that they are settling in well in Montreal and have no regrets about leaving. He is not aware of any returning to Argentina.
Most he said are young people who are beginning families and getting settled into jobs, or finishing their educations. “They may not yet be in their fields, but all are working,” he said.
“They are very happy to be here. At the beginning, it was difficult because of language [French is not a common second language among Argentine Jews] and the winter, but they have a better quality of life.” Many left behind parents and other relatives in Argentina.
Israeli demographer Sergio Della Pergola has put the Jewish population of Argentina at 190,000 today, but Rabbi Saferstein said the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee says it could be as high as 240,000 if people who may not be halachically Jewish are included. The community’s peak was about 350,000 people in the 1960s.
Eight thousand are known to have emigrated to Israel in the past decade, but there are no confirmable statistics for other destinations, said Rabbi Saferstein, but he believes the total is not more than 20,000.
“And many who went to Israel have come back,” he said.
Rabbi Saferstein became Canadian Jewry’s unpaid “man in Buenos Aires” because he is fluent in English and has good knowledge of the world.
He also takes a liberal view of where Argentine Jews should go – that is, he doesn’t think it must be Israel.
Although JIAS had an office in Buenos Aires, Rabbi Saferstein became the “address” for anyone thinking about Canada.
The “establishment” of the Argentine community has maintained that it can only promote emigration to Israel, he said. Rabbi Saferstein, who lived in Israel for seven years as a young man, believes that Jews should go wherever they wish.
But he does have mixed feelings about encouraging emigration, because it is eroding his own community, but his view is that people can’t be denied a better future, and he still doesn’t hesitate to recommend Canada.
“For we who remain, it is a very sad picture,” he said. “Our young people, our best and most skilled people, have left.”
The best approach at this time for attracting more Argentine Jews to Montreal is to promote McGill University or the Université de Montréal among students, who might later decide to stay, he said.
Rabbi Saferstein is thinking about leaving Argentina himself. He is concerned about the growing polarization between the haves and the have-nots in his country and says that many people who were formerly middle class are close to impoverished today.
A Jewish day school education, for example, which costs $250 a month, is more than many families can now afford, he said.
More worrisome to Rabbi Saferstein than the material losses is the worsening social climate. The rise in crime has almost become banal. While the rabbi was in Montreal, here his teenaged son called to say that his cellphone had been stolen.
“You get used to it, and are thankful it wasn’t worse,” he said.
The number of road fatalities – more than 400 in 2008 already – has spiked, he said. It’s also common to see people picking through the garbage for saleable items. Many youngsters are doing drugs, often cheap varieties, with disastrous consequences. The school dropout rate is up.
“Buenos Aires, which used to be like Paris, is more South American now,” he said. “I know the ‘good times’ will not last.”