Kibbutz with sabor.

• Author: Luxner, Larry
• Position: Hispanic Jews in Israel

They publish their own Spanish-language newspaper, Aurora. They boast their own farming settlement, Kibbutz Ga'ash, located along the Mediterranean coast. And on weekends, they dance up a storm at their own nightclub on Tel Aviv's trendy Hayarkon Street, where samba, salsa and merengue float out over the city long after everyone else have gone to sleep.

These are Israel's Hispanics--idealistic Jews who left their native Latin American countries years ago, and who, along with more recent arrivals, have made this dynamic, El Salvador-sized nation in the Middle East their new home. According to the Organization Latino-americana en Israel, these immigrants currently number 85,000--constituting nearly two percent of Israel's population. More than half are from Argentina, according to Saverio Lewinsky, the organization's vice-president. The rest hail from Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Venezuela, Mexico and a handful of Central American republics. Lewinsky, a retired science professor from Buenos Aires, says his Tel Aviv-based association counts 4,000 member families and 32 branches throughout Israel, from Eilat in the southern Negev Desert to Qiryat Shemona in the northern Galilee.

At Kibbutz Ga'ash, founded by Latin American immigrants in 1950, many of the original pioneers can still be seen driving tractors, milking cows or working at a small lamp factory that exports lighting equipment to Europe, Africa and the United States. "It took a lot of ideology to build this country. There was a lot of desert, enemies and war" recalls Haim Levine, who was born in...