AJS Review: The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies

This monograph is the newest contribution to historiography on post-1948 immigration to Israel. It asks both why it was, and how it was, that over a period of [End Page 222] nearly twenty years, tens of thousands of Jews from Argentina moved to this particular destination.

Between Exile and Exodus is divided into six chapters. After an introduction on methodology and historiography, the book provides background on the Jewish community in mid-twentieth-century Argentina. It explores the factors that motivated some members of that community to move to Israel, how Israeli officials and policymakers viewed these people, and how their immigration was organized and carried out. The book then focuses on who these immigrants were and how they should best be categorized (e.g., ḥaluẓim? capitalists? economic migrants?). The final chapter is devoted to the way the immigrants themselves experienced their relocation process.

Klor's book makes several worthwhile contributions to the fields of Jewish and Israel studies. It adds to our understanding of a community of migrants that is easily overlooked in Israeli historiography for the more visible (often larger) groups that arrived from countries such as Poland, Morocco, Iraq, and Yemen. It both furthers understanding of, and further problematizes, the motives that drive people to uproot to Israel. And it appropriately follows in the footsteps of historian Gur Alroey by showing that the categories of 'oleh vs. immigrant are hardly cut and dry and that debate over these categories is as relevant as ever.

The book's predominant strengths are its comprehensiveness and the clarity with which it breaks down its subject matter. It naturally speaks to an academic audience, but the writing—translated by Lenn Schramm—is easy to follow. The first chapter, on the history of Jews in Argentina, offers an illuminating depiction of a community that considers Argentina to be a "homeland," not just a country of residence. Klor reconstructs the layers of Jewish life in Argentina, revealing an interesting complexity: people who were unabashedly proud to be Argentinians, even as they embraced Jewish nationalism and Zionist ideology. It is a challenging comment on Jewish and Zionist identity politics.

In chapter 2, "The Pintele Yid and the Economic Calculation," Klor makes the persuasive argument that antisemitism did not play a major role in pushing Jews to leave Argentina for Israel. Instead the author maintains that, overwhelmingly, economics was the motivating factor. This position challenges popular misconceptions that imagine local antisemitism in Argentina to have been a greater force in this equation than it actually was.

Chapter 3, "We Do Not See the Living Individual," is one of the most comprehensive texts available today on the development and workings of Israeli immigration policy in the 1950s. In this particularly valuable section, Klor clearly explains the intricate relationships between the various immigration and absorption bodies as well as the complicated system that the individuals had to navigate on their way to, and upon their arrival at, their new country of residence.

Specialized scholars of Israeli demography will undoubtedly delight in chapter 5, "Marginal Immigrants," and its exacting categorization of immigrants according to classifications such as origin, age, marital status, gender, and occupation. Certainly this is useful information for scholars to have documented, but at this point in the book, Klor runs the risk of losing some of his readers as he presents so many details. [End Page 223]

The weakness in this work stems from the occupational hazard that is ever so difficult for historians to avoid: an overexuberance about our sources. Klor's excitement about the volumes of archival material he collected is palpable throughout the text. But, on occasion, this bogs the book down, and the larger significance of the subject can get lost in the detail. The book leaves the reader with interesting information, yet wondering about the bigger picture. What mark has this group of migrants left on Israeli society and culture...