In September 2022, JHE Contributor Michele Migliori began field work in Argentina to document synagogues and other Jewish heritage sites for his PhD research at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University.
His focus is on how synagogues in the Argentine countryside resemble European ones as the product of European Jewish immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
What’s European in these Argentine synagogues? And what elements in their art and architecture are, instead, local? These are among the questions he is asking.
In addition, while visiting these rural settlements, whose size and Jewish presence vary, he also investigates the condition and preservation – or lack of preservation — of their Jewish heritage sites.
In his Have Your Say personal essay, Synagogues in Rural Argentina – A meld of European origins and local sensibilities, Michele provides a look at his research (which we previewed in March when an exhibit of his photos opened in Buenos Aires.)
