Laura Limonic's Kugel and Frijoles raises a series of questions relevant to the social sciences, migration studies, and Latin American Jewish studies: In what ways do immigrants navigate ethnic and racial categories in their host society? How is “insider” status obtained within existing social hierarchies, and how does it influence life chances? To what extent are immigrants able to define their identities to situate themselves within American society? How do various groups interact with the host society's structural conditions, leading to particular outcomes, such as assimilation?
Limonic specifies two conditions conducive to immigrant assimilation in the United States: high human and social capital combined with racial proximity to the host society's mainstream. To test her hypotheses, Limonic conducted eighty-five in-depth interviews of Latin American Jewish immigrants—mostly from Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela—as well as participant observation in Argentina. Additionally, she analyzed data from the Pew Center's study on American Jews. She presents new information on an understudied population.
Limonic considers assimilation the main outcome for Latino Jews in the United States, and nonassimilation for Jews in Latin America. However, socioeconomic, political, and cultural realities are more complex. Limonic nods to the diversity of the Latin American landscape, but subsumes it under an overriding commonality: “While it is not possible to describe the rich history of immigration, community building, and economic and social insertion of Jews in Latin America in one chapter, it is possible to glean from these cases concordant themes that unite the Jewish experience across Latin America” (43). These themes include status as religious minorities vis-à-vis the Catholic majority, strong communal institutions, and elevated levels of antisemitism, which contribute to the development of an ethnic and cultural Jewish identity that differs from Jewish identities in the United States. However, there are multiple realities in Latin America and its Jewish communities. Limonic argues that Latin American Jews “have a strong sense of Jewishness and are often immersed in vibrant and robust communities.” But, as has been widely analyzed (by Haim Avni, Judit Bokser Liwerant, and Sergio DellaPergola), Jewishness and the character of Jewish communities are not identical across the region. This diversity even appears in Limonic's interviews. She writes that Latin American Jews are not wholly excluded from the mainstream, but rather they hold some prominent positions and take part in the cultural traditions of their countries. Thus, the insularity of Jewish communities varies across countries, subethnic groups, and levels of religiosity. Still, Limonic argues that Jewish insularity is the dominant pattern in the region.
While Limonic points to important contrasts between Jewish life in Latin America and the United States (kehillah vs. a congregational model), there are similarities that are not equally underscored. For example, exogamous marriage rates are more similar between Argentina and the United States (close to 50 percent) than in Mexico or Venezuela. Recent studies and local surveys also point to different intensities and modalities of antisemitism in the region, which do not necessarily contrast starkly with realities in the United States. While the book's main focus is on Latino Jews in the United States, a deeper study of their original communities is required to better understand the relation between the cultural backgrounds of Jewish immigrants, their historical legacies, national political and cultural contexts, and their “situational choices” in US communities. Studies of the region show that unique regional crises have had a differing impact on Jewish communities in Argentina, Venezuela, and Mexico. Venezuelan Jews arrived in larger numbers to areas such as Miami-Dade County, and perhaps with a greater sense of vulnerability and insecurity than other Latin American Jewish immigrants. Their transnational links with their home country might have diminished not only because of their assimilation into American culture, but also given their political distance from the ruling regime and the mass exile of their community.
Limonic clearly defines assimilation and the mechanisms through which immigrants achieve it. Nevertheless, the book lacks precise indicators for incorporation, acculturation, and integration, which could help analyze the multifaceted status of Latin American Jews in the region and abroad. A more balanced analysis of the three Latin American countries could also be obtained by expanding the primary and secondary sources consulted, including archival photographs and local studies that take the discussion beyond Judith Elkin's panoramic The Jews of Latin America.
Limonic shows that complex phenomena such as migration, incorporation, and assimilation cannot be understood only through one approach. She thus offers an instrumentalist-constructivist framework for ethnic identity. Both perspectives eschew the idea that ethnicity is only primordial, based on kinship or blood ties, but rather hold that it is socially constructed from within and without. But Limonic's proposal faces two limitations. First, it does not clearly show how to reconcile equilibrium points—central to instrumentalist approaches—with the constructivist conception that ethnicity is in “constant flux.” Second, the model does not explain how and why immigrants might choose to maintain hardcore identities, or transnationally transfer ethnic enclaves.
Limonic makes important comparisons across US localities, thus acknowledging subnational diversity: ethnic chain migration in South Florida and California and labor/professional migration on the East Coast. The size of Jewish communities, the history of immigration, the cultural environment, and ethnic-racial character vary across regions. Since the interplay between race, ethnicity, and class is contextualized locally, Jews build a panethnic Latino identity through various pathways of incorporation. The data do not necessarily indicate the emergence of a Latino Jewish identity, although Limonic's argument regarding the individual and group benefits of being Latino is persuasive. The survey by the Pew Hispanic Center concludes that most Hispanics prefer their family's country of origin over panethnic terms, and Limonic's research shows a similar trend among Latino Jews. A study commissioned by the AJC (2015) confirms that for Latino Jews, Latino is one, though not their primary ethnic identity. Furthermore, Latino Jews sustain transnational social ties with their country of origin. Even if a majority of respondents point to shared elements with a “Latino culture,” there is no robust evidence of “in-group solidarity.” Moreover, a shared sense of Latino norms, values, language, and food sets them apart from the American mainstream culture, a finding that challenges Limonic's main argument of assimilation. Thus, while Limonic's framework and findings contribute to our knowledge of Latin/Latino Jews in the United States, future research requires a larger and more representative sample, a careful reading of complex realities, and the examination of various forms of incorporation/integration, mainly because they could reveal alternative or complementary stages of development in these immigrants’ differentiated journeys.
