Kesher Talk

Argentinian Jews are replenishing Jewish ranks in Montreal: Alejandro Boim and Mariana Semino arrived last month in Montreal during an early snowfall, but that was hardly the biggest adjustment. Stranger was seeing people on the street smiling. "Back home, people don't smile any more," said Mr. Boim.

The couple is part of a fledgling contingent of Argentines settling in Montreal to escape their homeland's economic turmoil, and they are being embraced by a group eager to have them: the city's Jewish community. Faced with its own outflow of young people and a dramatically aging population, Jewish community members are eyeing Argentina, and to a lesser extent France and Belgium, as a source of replenishment for the oldest Jewish community in Canada.

For Boim and Semino, that means Montrealers are helping them settle in and get started. And that is tons more than anyone ever did for fresh immigrants a hundred years earlier.

posted by Howard @ 11/20/2002 10:58:57 AM