The presentation explores the marriage patterns of the Sephardi Jewish communities, paying special attention to when Sephardim began marrying Ashkenazi Jews, thereby giving birth to a new type of Jewish identity, neither fully Ashkenazi nor fully Sephardi, but Argentine. Although initially Sephardim respected the boundaries of their communities of origin, and usually married ‘within’, as the twentieth century progressed and new spaces for interaction of Jews from different origins became available choosing a marriage partner outside of the ‘group’ became more common. The presentation will suggest that loyalties to communities of origin slowly evolved into a stronger sense of belonging to the Argentine nation.

Adriana M. Brodsky, Associate Professor of Latin American History at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, obtained her PhD from Duke University in 2004. She is currently finishing a manuscript entitled Becoming Argentine Jews: Sephardim and the Construction of Ethnic and National Identities, 1880-1960, which focuses on the Sephardic communities that settled in Argentina from the end of the 19th century to mid-20th century, and has co-edited with Raanan Rein (Tel Aviv University) a book titled The New Jewish Argentina (Brill, 2012). She has published on Sephardi schools in Argentina, and on Jewish Beauty Contests. Her new project explores the experiences of Argentine Sephardi youth in the 1960s-1970s, which has received support from the Hadassah- Brandeis Institute.