Argentine migration to Israel: an understudied case

The central theme of both dossiers is Argentine migration to Israel. This case must be understood within a broader globalization process marked by the migration of millions of Latin Americans amid rapid demographic growth since the mid-twentieth century. Latin American Jews are part of this wider trend, increasingly relocating to OECD countries. Since the 1960s, nearly 250,000 Jews from Latin America have emigrated, primarily to the United States and Israel, followed by Spain and Canada. (Bokser Liwerant, 2013; Limonic, 2019; Koffman & Sheining, 2024) As a result, new ethnic enclaves of Latin American Jews have emerged in major urban centers, particularly in North America, with less systematically documented cases in Spain, Australia, and Canada. (Bokser Liwerant, 2015; Raijman et al., 2022).

Among these destinations, Israel constitutes the most extensively documented case in demographic and historical terms. Yet despite this relative richness of data, Latin American - and especially Argentine—migration to Israel has received limited sustained scholarly attention within both Latin American Jewish Studies and Israel Studies. Compared to earlier and demographically larger migration waves—such as Eastern Europeans in the pre-state era, Jews from North Africa and the Middle East in the 1950s, or immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s - Latin American migration has remained marginal in the academic literature.

Existing scholarship, largely confined to Latin American Jewish Studies, has tended to focus on three main analytical frames: first, emigration motives, including economic, political, ideological, and cultural factors (Rein, 2013; Klor, 2017; Krupnik, 2023); second, patterns of incorporation in Israel, often emphasizing the relatively smooth absorption of Latin American—and particularly Argentine—Jews; and third, ethnic or diasporic dynamics, especially in relation to Ashkenazi and Sephardi distinctions. Consequently, the Argentinian Jewish experience in Israel occupies an analytical blind spot: studies of Latin American Jewry frequently end their narratives at the point of emigration, while Israel Studies have prioritized larger and more politically salient immigrant groups.

This dossier seeks to contribute to bridging that gap by shifting attention to the subjective, existential, and psychosocial dimensions of Argentine migration to Israel. While historical, sociological, and political analyses of this migration are well established, fewer studies have examined how ideological legacies, emotional repertoires, and identity frameworks forged in Argentina are transplanted, adapted, and transformed within Israel’s distinctive social and geopolitical context. Despite its relevance for social psychology, this migration remains comparatively understudied when contrasted with research on other immigrant groups in Israel. Building on this gap, the present dossier draws on an emerging body of work that has begun to systematically address Argentine migration to Israel through the analysis of subjective, ideological, and affective processes. Previous exploratory research published in PSocial (2020) constituted an initial collective, programmatic effort to examine this population through a psychosocial lens, addressing ideological, affective, and identity-related processes (e.g., Cuello et al., 2020; Friedrich & Alvarez, 2020). Taken together, these studies highlighted how experiences of migration and crisis are mediated by psychosocial mechanisms that shape meaning-making, adaptation, and political orientation. The present dossier extends and consolidates this line of inquiry by situating such processes within renewed contexts of collective uncertainty and conflict, reinforcing a cumulative research agenda that foregrounds the role of social psychology in understanding migration not merely as a structural phenomenon, but as a lived, ideologically and emotionally embedded experience.

The present dossier

The three articles included in this dossier were developed within the framework of the joint course and reflect a structured pedagogical exercise aimed at training students in empirical research within social psychology, political psychology, and the psychology of migration. All three studies share a common methodological orientation, rely on small convenience samples, and should be read as exploratory contributions produced in an educational context. At the same time, they offer empirically grounded illustrations of how key psychosocial constructs may operate in the context of Argentine migration to Israel.

The first article, Religion, Spirituality, and Subjective Well-Being: A Study on Event Centrality and Fear of Death in Argentine Jewish Immigrants in Israel (Ben Tovim et al., 2024), examines the relationships between spirituality, religious involvement, mortality-related concerns, and subjective well-being. The findings suggest a differentiated role of spirituality and institutional religiosity, indicating that meaning-oriented spiritual resources are more closely associated with well-being than religious involvement per se. In contrast, mortality-related concerns are linked to less favorable affective profiles, underscoring the relevance of existential dimensions for understanding well-being among immigrant populations living under conditions of uncertainty.

The second article, Spirituality, Acculturation, and Fear of Death: A Psychometric Analysis of Argentine Jewish Migrants in Israel during the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Iron Swords War (Auerbach et al., 2024), situates acculturation processes within overlapping collective crises. The study highlights the limited explanatory role of spirituality and religious involvement in acculturation strategies, while emphasizing the importance of event centrality and mortality-related concerns. The findings suggest that how migrants construe critical events within their life narratives, together with perceived threat and death-related fears, may be more closely linked to acculturation dynamics than spiritual or religious variables alone.

The third article, Centrality of Events and Changes in Political Identity: The Impact of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict on Argentine Immigrants (Gambino & Hagai, 2024), addresses the political dimension of migration. Focusing on event centrality, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation, the study explores whether sustained exposure to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is associated with changes in political identity. While exploratory, the article illustrates how prolonged contexts of perceived threat may be analytically connected to political attitudes among immigrant populations.

Taken together, the articles in this dossier—along with those published in the previous installment—demonstrate how pedagogical research settings can generate empirically informed, theoretically meaningful, and methodologically cautious contributions to the study of migration. Their value lies less in the robustness of their conclusions than in the clarity with which they formulate research questions, operationalize key constructs, and situate empirical observations within established theoretical frameworks.

As is typical of student-led exploratory research, limitations must be acknowledged. The small sample size (N = 26) constrains statistical power and generalizability. Although bootstrap techniques were employed to enhance the stability of parameter estimates, the findings should be interpreted with caution. These limitations, however, are consistent with the formative aims of the project and reinforce its role as an entry point for future, more comprehensive investigations.

This dossier thus seeks to contribute not only to the literature on Argentine migration to Israel, but also to broader discussions on research-based teaching in the social sciences. By integrating international collaboration, student training, and exploratory empirical work, it highlights the potential of pedagogical research formats to inform and stimulate subsequent lines of inquiry.

Finally, it is worth emphasizing that both installments of this pedagogical project were developed under conditions of profound collective crisis. The first dossier emerged in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, while the present one was conducted amid an ongoing war in Gaza. These contexts (marked by uncertainty, vulnerability, and heightened perceptions of threat) were not merely external backdrops, but constitutive conditions that shaped the questions asked, the variables explored, and the interpretive sensibilities brought into the research process. Far from constraining inquiry, these moments of crisis enriched the pedagogical and analytical experience, sharpening students’ engagement with issues such as mortality, fear, meaning-making, identity, and adaptation.

At the same time, the students and the topics intensified the significance of the international collaboration between the University of Buenos Aires and Tel Aviv University, transforming the joint classroom into a shared intellectual space in which students confronted global uncertainty together. In this sense, the value of these dossiers lies not only in their empirical contributions, but also in their demonstration of how cross-national academic cooperation and research-based teaching can generate meaningful knowledge precisely under conditions of instability and crisis.

References

Auerbach, Y., Mercuri Stieb, O., & Mitidieri, F (2024). Spirituality, Acculturation, and Fear of Death: A Psychometric Analysis of Argentine Jewish Migrants in Israel during the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Iron Swords War. PSocial, 10(2) e-9.

Ben Tovim, J., , Stark, I , & Capra, G. (2024). Religion, Spirituality, and Subjective Well-Being: A Study on Event Centrality and Fear of Death in Argentine Jewish Immigrants in Israel. PSocial, 10(2) e-8.

Bokser Liwerant., (2013). Latin American Jews in the United States: Community and Belonging in Times of Transnationalism.” Contemporary Jewry, 33, no. 1/2, 121-43.

Cuello, C. J., Dzavsarov, D., & Paz, E. (2020). Political Identity Movement in Times of Crisis: The Impact of Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Economic System Justification on Political Views during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Argentine immigrants in Israel. PSocial, 6(1), 37-47.

Friedrich, M., & Alvarez, F. (2020). Acculturation in Jewish Argentines Migrating to Israel. PSocial, 6(1), 26-36.

Gambino, B. & Hagai Gunder, H. (2024). Centrality of Events and Changes in Political Identity: The Impact of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict on Argentine Immigrants. PSocial, 10(2) e-10.

Klor S., (2017). Between Exodus and Exile, Wayne State University Press, Detroit MI 2017.

Koffman, David S. and Sheini, David, M.K., (2024). “Common Origins, Distinctive Paths: what’s to be gained by putting Argentine Jewry and Canadian Jewry into conversation.” In: Promised Lands North and South, 1-20.

Krupnik, A. (2023). Between two homelands: Argentine migration to and from Israel. University of Alabama Press.

Limonic, Laura., (2019). Kugel and Frijoles Latino Jews in the United States. Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI.

Raijman Rebeca, Armony Victor and Babis Deby., (2022). “Life Satisfaction of Latin American Immigrants in Canada and Israel”, Bulletin of Latin American Research 41, 5, 785–801.

Rein, R. (2013). Searching for home abroad: jews in Argentina and argentines in Israel. Historie–Otázky–Problémy 5, 155–169

Información adicional

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