Progressive Jewish women in Argentina

Abstract

This work shows the profiles of the women who joined the Women’s Organization Idisher Cultur Farband (ICUF) between 1947 and 1957 in Argentina. Identified with a secular Jewish culture and the fight against fascism that promoted the Communist International since 1935, a group of activists founded the Women’s Organization ICUF (OFI) in 1947. The OFI encouraged the creation of “reading circles” (in yiddish: “leien craizn”) in each of the entities attached to its movement. They also edited the bilingual magazine Di ídishe froi-La mujer judía between 1950 and 1970. From their daily work in schools and libraries and the pages of that publication, OFI developed a real “female pedagogy” rooted in a liberal, antifascist, anti-Peronist, and Jewish, but not Zionist, culture. The study of OFI makes clear the way in which these Yiddish-speaking women, admirers of the USSR, built their progressive Jewish identity in Argentina.