Ilan Stavans
The Seventh Heaven:
Travels through Jewish Latin America
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019, ISBN 0822945851
Reviewed by Sandra Messinger Cypess*
Latin American countries have received their share of famous travel writers. One of the most renowned was the early nineteenth century German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, whose five-year journey was spent mostly in what is now Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, and Cuba. As his goal was to advance the sciences Humboldt made astronomical observations, measured the height of mountains, collected plant specimens, studied the artifacts of the Aztec and other civilizations, and collected economic data. Not surprisingly, religious groups like the Jews of Latin America did not form part of his perspective. That void has been now corrected with the publication of The Seventh Heaven by Ilan Stavans, the multi-talented professor of humanities at Amherst College. Stavans, who was born in Mexico, has published numerous pieces that deal with his Jewish identity and its permutations. Although he also spent five years traveling to the same countries as Humboldt, he records a very different outlook.
The Seventh Heaven is an impressionistic travelogue-memoir that chronicles his journeys throughout Latin America, Spain, and Israel. The title alludes to a concept found in rabbinic literature, and later transported to Christians and Muslims, that the “Seventh Heaven” was nearest to God and thus, of pure bliss. Here it refers also to the attempt to know more fully the meaning of Jewish life in Latin America. He patterned his work after the folklorist S. Ansky and his many-faceted narrative dealing with post-World War I Jews in the Pale of Settlement. In seven chapters, Stavans describes his meetings with members of the various Jewish communities, including writers, artists, and academics, as well as yeshiva students, taxi drivers, butchers, and visitors to the graveyards he frequents. He also provides historical and literary contexts that enrich the text for readers who are not familiar with Latin American culture, in general. Given the common knowledge that many Nazis fled to Latin America after World War II, it is not surprising that he also delves into the topic of anti-Semitism in Latin America and the Nazi presence in Argentina as well as in Chile and Venezuela. Stavans also visits communities of Jewish converts that he discovers in Mexico, Columbia, Peru, and, Brazil, as well as in the United States. He questions the terms “Indian Jews” and crypto-Jews.
In each location, Stavans meets with key figures of the Jewish communities who serve as knowledgeable local guides. His first stop is Buenos Aires and the neighborhood known as “El Once,” because it is “the place that Jews in Argentina are most commonly associated with” (p. 11). The novelist, screenwriter and journalist Marcelo Birmajer, the visual artist Marcelo Brodsky, and filmmaker Edgardo Cozarinsky are his main guides. All engage in enlightening conversations about the specifics of the area and Argentine Jews, in general. Stavans labels this chapter “Yiddish Gauchos,” which alludes to Los gauchos judíos, the 1910 novel by Alberto Gerchunoff that recounts life for Jews who settled in the Pampas and attempted to adapt to their new country.
The next chapter, “Kahlo’s Eyebrows,” is ostensibly about Mexico, his birth country. As is his modus operandi in all the chapters, however, Stavans introduces one topic and then meanders to many others that pique his interest, one probably unknown to readers. Here, he begins by not supporting the claims that Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera had Jewish ancestry, which leads him to mention the Jewish intellectual Anita Brenner’s friendship with them. Next he relates information about “indios judíos,” which leads to a discussion of the Spanish Inquisition in colonial times. He also includes illuminating conversations with Angelina Muñiz-Huberman, a recognized poet and essayist whose family has roots dating to pre-1492 Spain but had immigrated to Mexico because of the Spanish Civil War.
In Chapter Four, Ruth Behar, noted anthropologist and “Juban,” joins Stavans in exploring the facets of Jewish life in Cuba, including a visit with Adela Dworkin, “the depository of the Jewish community memory” (129). Since there had been a relationship between Cuba and Venezuela, Stavans also includes comments about Venezuela in this chapter. One of the most sobering aspects of his travels is chronicled in Chapter Five, “Rat Route,” which deals the Dirty War in Chile and various permutations of antisemitism found in Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela.
Chapter Six, “Making Aliyah,” explores the varied connections between Israel and Latin America with the help of two friends who live in Israel now, Ury Vainsencher and Eliezer Nowodworski, the latter was introduced in earlier in sections dealing with the 1994 AMIA bombing and anti-Semitism. The academic Ranaan Rein also offers information on Latin American Jews living in Israel.
The seventh chapter can be considered a coda as it deals mostly with Stavans’ diverse reactions to the aftereffects of the 2016 presidential election in the United States and its impact on immigrants, especially those like himself with multiple identities--a Mexican, a Jew and a Latino. Stavans concludes that what defines a Jew in Latin America or in the United States is being a person of “disparate heritages.”
“Travelogue” is not an adequate word to describe Stavans’ work; like the Jews he describes who straddle different cultures, Jewish, Catholic, European, and Latin American, his book is a “mescolanza” of observations about people, food, customs, beliefs, literary anecdotes, along with facts about important sites, restaurants, and other data. For this reader, it was enjoyable to “eavesdrop” on Stavans’ lively conversations and literary commentaries with a distinguished list of knowledgeable guides. He also packs in snippets of information not readily included in a travelogue that show his interest in literature and history; for example, the global icon Borges is referred to in several chapters. Stavans also includes a discussion of Padre Las Casas, an important priest of the Colonial period who is called the “Defender of the Indians,” in contrast to the military conquistadors. Las Casas believed that the Indians were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes. This belief was significant since it supported the idea that the Indians were indeed human!
For this reader, it was distracting to note some repetition of phrases, typos, infelicitous use of language, and misinformation in the text, which given all the names, dates, titles, and more that are included must not have been easy to copyedit. Noticeable examples include: “Jewish coverts,” “Paz as a philanthropic oger,” “the Israeli Defense Force is known as Tzavah,” “there is no word in Hebrew that is the equivalent of Aliyah,” and no tilde on the name of Muñiz-Huberman. Nevertheless, the many “morsels” of information encompassing a varied gamut of topics reveal Stavans’ intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, which he applies to a significant topic that should interest many readers.
* Sandra Messinger Cypess is Professor Emerita of Latin American Literature and has served as Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Maryland. Her research deals primarily with women writers, the representation of women in Latin American literature, and Latin American theater, with emphasis on feminist theory and semiotics. Cypess was recognized in El país for her lifelong work on the figure of La Malinche, e.g., La Malinche in Mexican Literature: From History to Myth, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991, as well as the neglected author Elena Garro, Uncivil Wars: Elena Garro, Octavio Paz, and the Battle for Cultural Memory, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012.