Moises Ville, Argentina
Jewish Gauchos
Moises Ville's Jewish gauchos are tough and clever. They have always had to be, in order to flourish on Argentina's harsh plains, thousands of miles from the European communities they fled. Perhaps this is why the formerly-Jewish town of Moises Ville, a 10-hour bus ride north-west from Buenos Aires into the Pampas, is better positioned than most communities in Argentina to survive the country's current economic and political crisis.
"Here, we are used to making the best of bad situations," says Golde Kuperstein de Gerson, Moises Ville's deputy mayor and the chair of the Baron Hirsch Hospital Board. Golde beams like a yiddishe grandmother recalling the ingenuity of the town's founders: "They brought nothing when they came in 1889 and established the Town of Moses, Moises Ville. By 1891, they already had the basis of the community institutions that are the pride and joy of Moises Ville until today." Golde explains that through the 1940s, Moises Ville had 7,000 residents, 95 percent of whom were Jewish. Today, the town is much smaller and less than 15 percent Jewish, about 300 of 2,700 residents. "But the Jewish spirit survives in our institutions," Golde insists.
Most of these institutions are named for Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a German Jewish banker, who in 1891 purchased 600,000 hectares in the Argentine Pampas. Hirsch's Jewish Colonization Association resettled thousands of Eastern European Jewish refugees in Argentine agricultural communities, beginning with Moises Ville. Today the Baron Hirsch synagogue is the last functioning synagogue in Moises Ville.
Goldie's husband of 50 years, Hermann Gerson, is the synagogue's president and one of Moises Ville's remaining Jewish cowboys. The Baron Hirsch foundation rescued Hermann from the Nazis as a young man, establishing him in Moises Ville with a plot of land to work. But Hermann confides that he wanted to be an engineer. "My main concern as a rancher was to help my children to become professionals," he says.
Most other fathers felt the same. Moises Ville's Jewish population has declined sharply as children moved to the big cities for educational and professional opportunities and their parents followed them. Some, like rancher Kurt Rosenthal, disagree with Hermann. "The country is a passion," Kurt says. "If I had to choose again, I would do again what I've done for the last 47 years" -- work as a cowboy. Kurt is proud that his son, a certified accountant, will eventually leave his banking job and take over the ranching business. "The Baron Hirsch Foundation had as its objective demonstrating that Jews could work the land and my son will follow that tradition," Kurt says. "Only if we lose that, have we lost everything in Moises Ville."
Hermann Gerson, President of Moises Ville's Baron Hirsch synagogue, reads Torah from the bimah, which Moises Ville’s Jewish ranchers fashioned like an ornate corral, with hand-sanded, stained and varnished logs at cross-angles. Hermann briefly trained to be a rabbi in Germany before his family fled from the Nazis to the Argentine Pampas, where he has been a rancher ever since.
The old way still works in Moises Ville, Argentina. Moises Ville’s original settlers were clever and tough enough to thrive deep in the Pampas, building great Jewish institutions like this school (left) and synagogue (right). These same instincts may help their descendants to overcome Argentina’s current political and economic crisis.
Hermann and Golde Gerson, married 50 years in Moises Ville, Argentina, share a mate (Argentine herbal tea) in their home after Hermann returns from another long afternoon in the fields. Emulating Moises Ville's founders, the Gersons dedicate themselves to keeping the town's Jewish community institutions running against all odds.
Hermann Gerson, 79, and his non-Jewish riding partner, Lorenzo Sosa, 78, have been working together for over 60 years at Gerson’s ranch on the Pampas. On a typical afternoon, the pair corral a herd of cattle. Lorenzo rides in screaming from atop his horse behind the stampede as Hermann swings his rebenque (a short leather whip), hooting and shouting to scare the cows into the pen so he can start the day’s branding. Just before sunset, driving home from the range, Lorenzo shares a few tidbits he has learned from Hermann over the years. “This Hermann,” Lorenzo says, winking, “has a meshuguneh kup (crazy head, in Yiddish).” Hermann retorts in kind: “Kish mir in tuchus.”
Borito Trumper, 35, returned to the vigorous life in the Pampas after years studying and working as a professional in Israel. "I went to Israel with the idea of staying there," he recounts. "I came back to Moises Ville simply because I didn't feel comfortable. My customs are from Moises Ville, country customs." Now Borito patrols his herds on horseback, traversing the same fields his family has worked for a century. He fluently intersperses discussion of his Jewish identity with a lesson in horseback riding and a lecture on the benefits of cross breeding cattle to produce superior beef. Borito represents the future of Moises Ville’s “gauchos judios.” As he says, "It would never occur to me to stop tending my fields and herds here again."