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R

eturnees to Torah observance are no longer a rarity in today’s world and every Jewish community is blessed by their presence. But for one small secular Jewish community of fewer than 1000 people to produce over two-dozen baalei teshuvah families in the last 15 years is remarkable. And when that community is located in ruralArgentina hundreds of kilometers from the nearest Orthodox enclave it is truly astounding.

One of the primary goals of our recent South American trip — about which we have previously written in these pages — was to visit kosher slaughterhouses and learn how the shochtim live in faraway locales spending months away from home. One of these abattoirs was located so far from civilization that the shochtim who work there take a 12-hour overnight sleeper bus fromBuenos Aires to reach their destination. We thought we would be more clever and shorten our travel time by flying to a relatively close townResistencia just a four-hour drive from that particular abattoir and home to the nearest airport.

As long as we would be inResistencia we of course wanted to check to see if there was any sort of Jewish community in the town. And lo and behold there are in fact Jews inResistencia — and they are much more committed and dedicated than we could have ever imagined. Before we arrived we found out that the town has a shul yet that was the extent of our knowledge of the place; after many calls and e-mails to contacts in the US Israel and Argentina we found out about someone named Amalia who seemed like she would be a reasonable point person within the city. In the course of several e-mails to her she was still hesitant to show us the synagogue and cemetery insisting that they were all Reform and she was “chareidi.” Not sure what to make of a self-described chareidi in this remote location we booked our tickets to Resistencia and headed out to see what was left of this 140-year-old community — hoping this woman would indeed prove to be a contact we could rely on.

City of Surprises

Boarding the flight in Buenos Airesto the provincial airport in Resistencia we were quite surprised to see another frum Jew on the flight. Our traveling partner turned out to be Rabbi David Ariel Allami a sofer from Buenos Aires of Syrian descent who was heading to the region to give a shiur that evening. That was our first hint that we’d find a lot more Jewishness inResistencia than one old synagogue.