DescriptionThis study explores Jewish and non-Jewish Argentine reactions and responses to four pivotal events that unfolded in the twentieth century: the 1919 Semana Trágica, the Catholic education decrees of the 1940s, the 1962 Sirota Affair, and the 1976-1983 Dirty War. The methodological decision to focus on four physically and/or culturally violent acts is intentional: while the passionate and emotive reactions and responses to those events may not reflect everyday political, cultural, and social norms in twentieth-century Argentine society, they provide a compelling opportunity to test the ever-changing meaning, boundaries, and limitations of argentinidad over the past century. The four episodes help to reveal the challenges Argentines have faced in assimilating a religious minority and what those efforts suggest about how various groups have sought to define and control what it has meant to be “Argentine” over time. Scholars such as Samuel Baily, Fernando DeVoto, José Moya and others have done an excellent job highlighting how Italian and Spanish immigrants have negotiated and navigated the competing demands of ‘ethnic’ preservation and ‘national’ integration in Argentina. However, Italians and Spaniards— who comprised 85% of the total immigrant population between 1870-1930— benefited from a religious, linguistic, and cultural familiarity with their host country that Jewish immigrants did not. The presence of Jewish immigrants and later Jewish Argentines challenged the efforts of Argentines to assimilate newcomers in ways Catholic immigrants and Catholic Argentines could not. Since the days of Alberdi and Sarmiento, Argentina has often championed itself as a nation of liberal secularism and religious tolerance, yet the overwhelming majority of Catholic immigrants were not in a position to test the civic and cultural boundaries of that rhetoric and reality the way Jews did. Jewish Argentines, more so than their Spanish and Italian counterparts, forced a diverse cross-section of Argentines to ‘clarify’ their definitions of civic assimilation, national integration, and the place reserved for minorities within their visions of Argentina and argentinidad.