Educational Media Reviews Online

The largest Jewish community in Latin America is located in Argentina with an estimate of more than 200,000 people. Seven Days in Once is a short documentary about daily life in the Jewish community neighborhood of Buenos Aires and its transformation in the last twenty years. This documentary is visually organized in seven parts or days. Approximately fifty members of the community were interviewed for this film, among them, teachers, small business owners, actors, a young housewife, two children, a group of retired people and the directors of IWO Institute for Jewish Research, the Argentinean Hebraic Society and the Director of IFT the Yiddish Theater.

The Jewish community arrived in Argentina from Poland in 1909. They organized themselves in the ONCE (Eleven) neighborhood in the center of Buenos Aires. In the first segment the interviewers talk about the history of the neighborhood and the changes of the last ten to fifteen years, following the exodus of the younger generation, which has been emigrating to other countries looking for better opportunities. The second segment, sub-titled: “The Explosion,” follows the transformation of the community in the aftermath of a 1994 bombing. “The Explosion” refers to the bombing of the AIMA building ten years ago, which killed 87 and injured 200 people. AIMA was the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, which housed a group of Argentine Jewish Organizations. A difficulty with the video is that none of this information is included in the documentary, leaving the audience with more questions than answers. Through oral history the rest of the segments continue to describe the community's traditions and costumes, including their culinary and religious traditions, but a large part of the documentary concentrates on the aftermath of the 1994 bombing.

Although the Argentinean government began a criminal investigation, till this date the investigation is inconclusive, and the government has not given additional protection to this community. As a result, the citizens themselves have organized to increase security in specific buildings by using barricades and private security posted outside buildings. The question of what constitutes a ghetto comes into play in one of the segments. Is Once now a ghetto? Was it ever a ghetto? The bombing of the AIMA building has made them realize their condition as “second class citizens” contradicts their past, since Once has always been a neighborhood with a strong Jewish identity yet open to all ideas, and the establishment of open institutions. Interestingly enough, the documentary's last segment relates the meaning of the word “Once.” Taken from a Yiddish song “Canción del Once (Once’s Song),” written by the Jewish-Argentinean writer Marcelo Bermajer, it means that, in Once, everybody is equal, and life is all about the llth commandment: “Life will continue,” in spite of death, cruelty and tragedy.

Recommended for senior high, undergraduates and graduate students, as well as libraries with strong Latin American and Jewish Studies collections. It could be of interest to sociology, history, political science students researching the topic of immigration and Diaspora.