Kesher Talk

Jews in odd places: Uruguay: But not for long. Sergio Goldstein, Israel's immigration minister, points out: “We had 550 olim in 2002 alone,” using the Hebrew word for immigrants.

For a country with a Jewish population even less than the official number of 20,000, according to Goldstein, the number of olim is high.

“Proportionally, it is as if more than 5,000 American Jews picked up their lives and made aliyah in a given year,” said Goldstein, who came from Israel to take up his post in November 2001.

Before 1999, when the current recession began, approximately 80 Uruguayan Jews had been moving to Israel per year for at least a decade.

But as the economy dipped, strains on the country’s primarily middle-class Jewish population increased. One hundred and twelve relocated to Israel in 1999, 89 in 2000 and 170 in 2001.

Last year’s surge, however, came as a result of the December 2001 economic and political crash in Argentina, Uruguay’s primary business partner.

Overall, an estimated 40,000 of Uruguay’s 3.3 million people emigrated last year for economic reasons.

posted by William @ 6/17/2003 08:18:50 AM