The Seventh Heaven: Travels Through Jewish Latin America

by Ilan Stavans

2020 Natan Notable Book

Winner, 2020 Latino Book Awards Best Travel Book

Internationally renowned essayist and cultural commentator Ilan Stavans spent five years traveling from across a dozen countries in Latin America, in search of what defines the Jewish communities in the region, whose roots date back to Christopher Columbus’s arrival. In the tradition of V.S. Naipaul’s explorations of India, the Caribbean, and the Arab World, he came back with an extraordinarily vivid travelogue. Stavans talks to families of the desaparecidos in Buenos Aires, to “Indian Jews,” and to people affiliated with neo-Nazi groups in Patagonia. He also visits Spain to understand the long-term effects of the Inquisition, the American Southwest habitat of “secret Jews,” and Israel, where immigrants from Latin America have reshaped the Jewish state. Along the way, he looks for the proverbial “seventh heaven,” which, according to the Talmud, out of proximity with the divine, the meaning of life in general, and Jewish life in particular, becomes clearer. The Seventh Heaven is a masterful work in Stavans’s ongoing quest to find a convergence between the personal and the historical.

Genres: Judaism, Jewish, Nonfiction

296 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2019

About the author

Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. An award-winning writer and public television host, his books include Growing Up Latino and Spanglish. A native of Mexico City, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Readersaurus]

I’m still very interested in the topic of this book but I think I need a different entry point. This one has too many asides and details that are unfamiliar to me snd I’m missing a lot. One to return to later.

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A non fiction book that took five years to author. Tells the story of Ilan Stavans travels across a dozen counties in Latin America, in search of what defines the Jewish communities in the region. The book is interesting and worth the read.

Read by my Jewish Book Club in March 2023.

[Ilana · Rating 5 out of 5]

An introspective, idiosyncratic, emotional travelogue-cum-memoir that explores the author's personal identity as a Latin American (and US American) Jew as much as it explores the Jewish histories of various Latin American countries. I found by turns deeply moving, circuitous, and sometimes funny. It was deeply immersive, as well - I really feel, having read it, that I've somehow visited all the places Stavans describes alongside the author, and been physically present for the conversations he has with his many, many interlocutors throughout the text. The diversion toward Europe at the very end of the book was surprising and very effective in disturbing the reader, jolting me from the complacency I felt upon reaching the end of the book, which - up until the last few pages - was wrapping up in a satisfying and unsurprising way. I don't know if Stavans intended to upset the expectations of the reader, but I thought that this choice was very effective in complicating the narrative of the book up until that point (as though it wasn't already complicated enough!). A great read, on the whole.

There are a couple criticisms; there was an oddly large number of typos that should have been caught by a copy-editor (minor misspellings, forgotten prepositions, etc.). This was annoying to me, because Stavans is both an engaging storyteller and a reputable scholar, and a book by such an author should not be riddled with so many typographical errors that it puts the reader in mind of a self-published novelette on Amazon.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a dream of visiting his childhood home in Mexico that started Ilan Stavans on his journey through Latin America – a journey that included visits to the U.S. and Israel to learn more about Latino Jews. In his book “The Seventh Heaven: Travels Through Jewish Latin America” (University of Pittsburgh Press), Stavans decides to write about the lives and history of those Jews through a personal lens. The book is part travelogue, part dialogue with those he meets and part critical discussions of writers – some of whom are Jewish and many of whom are not – and of films he likes. Rather than a systematic look at Latin America, his book is more of a mosaic, filled with interesting bits and pieces, although the final picture never feels completely in focus.
Read the rest of my review at http://www.thereportergroup.org/Artic...

[Erika Dreifus]

If anyone is an expert on Jewish Latin America, it's Ilan Stavans. And as I try to fill this gap in my Jewish knowledge/literacy I'm grateful for his many contributions, of which this is just one of the very latest (especially given this article of mine, I'm also looking forward to reading his new volume on The Return of Carvajal: A Mystery).

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

To me, the most interesting (and travelogue-like) parts of this book were the chapters on Buenos Aires (the Jewish center of Latin America but also the city that has suffered the most from anti-Semitic terrorism) and Cuba (peaceful but disgracefully poor, with crumbling housing and pharmacies
that are rarely open). The rest of the book is more organized by topic than by country: for example there are chapters on anti-Semitism, human rights violations by 1970s military dictatorships, and Latin American migration to Israel.