The Seventh Heaven: Travels Through Jewish Latin America
2020 Natan Notable Book
Winner, 2020 Latino Book Awards Best Travel Book
Internationally renowned essayist and cultural commentator Ilan Stavans spent five years traveling from across a dozen countries in Latin America, in search of what defines the Jewish communities in the region, whose roots date back to Christopher Columbus’s arrival. In the tradition of V.S. Naipaul’s explorations of India, the Caribbean, and the Arab World, he came back with an extraordinarily vivid travelogue. Stavans talks to families of the desaparecidos in Buenos Aires, to “Indian Jews,” and to people affiliated with neo-Nazi groups in Patagonia. He also visits Spain to understand the long-term effects of the Inquisition, the American Southwest habitat of “secret Jews,” and Israel, where immigrants from Latin America have reshaped the Jewish state. Along the way, he looks for the proverbial “seventh heaven,” which, according to the Talmud, out of proximity with the divine, the meaning of life in general, and Jewish life in particular, becomes clearer. The Seventh Heaven is a masterful work in Stavans’s ongoing quest to find a convergence between the personal and the historical.
1130553445
The Seventh Heaven: Travels Through Jewish Latin America
2020 Natan Notable Book
Winner, 2020 Latino Book Awards Best Travel Book
Internationally renowned essayist and cultural commentator Ilan Stavans spent five years traveling from across a dozen countries in Latin America, in search of what defines the Jewish communities in the region, whose roots date back to Christopher Columbus’s arrival. In the tradition of V.S. Naipaul’s explorations of India, the Caribbean, and the Arab World, he came back with an extraordinarily vivid travelogue. Stavans talks to families of the desaparecidos in Buenos Aires, to “Indian Jews,” and to people affiliated with neo-Nazi groups in Patagonia. He also visits Spain to understand the long-term effects of the Inquisition, the American Southwest habitat of “secret Jews,” and Israel, where immigrants from Latin America have reshaped the Jewish state. Along the way, he looks for the proverbial “seventh heaven,” which, according to the Talmud, out of proximity with the divine, the meaning of life in general, and Jewish life in particular, becomes clearer. The Seventh Heaven is a masterful work in Stavans’s ongoing quest to find a convergence between the personal and the historical.
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The Seventh Heaven: Travels Through Jewish Latin America

The Seventh Heaven: Travels Through Jewish Latin America

by Ilan Stavans
The Seventh Heaven: Travels Through Jewish Latin America

The Seventh Heaven: Travels Through Jewish Latin America

by Ilan Stavans

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Overview

2020 Natan Notable Book
Winner, 2020 Latino Book Awards Best Travel Book
Internationally renowned essayist and cultural commentator Ilan Stavans spent five years traveling from across a dozen countries in Latin America, in search of what defines the Jewish communities in the region, whose roots date back to Christopher Columbus’s arrival. In the tradition of V.S. Naipaul’s explorations of India, the Caribbean, and the Arab World, he came back with an extraordinarily vivid travelogue. Stavans talks to families of the desaparecidos in Buenos Aires, to “Indian Jews,” and to people affiliated with neo-Nazi groups in Patagonia. He also visits Spain to understand the long-term effects of the Inquisition, the American Southwest habitat of “secret Jews,” and Israel, where immigrants from Latin America have reshaped the Jewish state. Along the way, he looks for the proverbial “seventh heaven,” which, according to the Talmud, out of proximity with the divine, the meaning of life in general, and Jewish life in particular, becomes clearer. The Seventh Heaven is a masterful work in Stavans’s ongoing quest to find a convergence between the personal and the historical.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780822966319
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date: 02/04/2020
Series: Pitt Latin American Series
Edition description: 1
Pages: 296
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

About The Author
Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College.

Table of Contents

1 The Pull 3

2 Yiddish Gauchos 11

3 Kahlo's Eyebrows 64

4 Paradise Lost 123

5 Rat Route 172

6 Making Aliyah 220

7 The Push 266

Acknowledgments 281

Selected Readings 285

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