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Friday April 22, 2005

Jews, Arabs tango together in Buenos Aires

by larry luxner
jta

buenos aires | Anibal Jaule, a well-known tango singer, has performed throughout his native Argentina and as far away as the United Arab Emirates.

But the 54-year-old baritone, whose ancestors were from Lebanon, never imagined that one day he’d sing in a synagogue.

Along with three other Argentine musicians of Arab descent and seven Jewish musicians, Jaule forms the nucleus of Salam-Shalom, the world’s first Arab-Jewish tango orchestra.

The idea is simple: to promote peace and understanding between Arabs and Jews through tango, Argentina’s beloved national music.

Naming the orchestra Salam-Shalom — “peace” in Arabic and Hebrew — was the brainchild of Segismundo Holzman, a concert promoter and lifelong tanguero who last year established an all-Jewish tango orchestra called Inspiracion.

“I have very good friends of Arab origin,” Holzman said. “In this country, Arabs and Jews have had good relations for many years, so I thought, why not have an orchestra that adapts both Arab and Jewish music to the tango?”

Holzman registered the name Salam-Shalom in June 2003 and quickly won the sponsorship of both the Centro Islamico de la Republica Argentina, the country’s leading Muslim entity, and AMIA, Argentina’s largest Jewish organization.

After a year of preparation, the orchestra held its first concert in November 2004 at the Salon Dorado de la Legislatura de Buenos Aires, an official government reception hall.

Two weeks later, the local Jewish community inaugurated a new shul in the Buenos Aires suburb of Belgrano, and Salam-Shalom was there for the occasion.

“Never before had Arab musicians performed in a synagogue in Argentina,” Holzman said.

Omar Ahmed Abboud, secretary of the Centro Islamico, says these kinds of events help dispel the notion that Arabs and Jews cannot live together peacefully.

“We’re in favor of any cultural initiative whose principal objective is to create a climate of peace,” Abboud said. “We have very good relations with the Jews, and we have some common elements, the first being that we are all Argentines. Even the terrorist attack against AMIA headquarters,” the main Buenos Aires Jewish institution, which was bombed in July 1994, “did not affect relations between the Arabs and Jews.”

Lior Hayat, cultural and press attache at the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, said the Israeli government enthusiastically supports the idea of a Jewish-Arab tango orchestra.

“Our point of view is that the Middle East conflict shouldn’t be exported all over the world,” Hayat said. “The idea is that these are Jews and Arabs in Argentina; they are not Israelis and Palestinians. They can cooperate together; they can play music together.”

Roughly 900,000 of Argentina’s 36 million inhabitants trace their origins to the Arab world. Slightly less than half are Muslim; the rest are Christian. There are about 250,000 Argentines of Jewish origin.

The Israeli Arab conflict is a world apart from the poor Buenos Aires neighborhood of La Boca, where tango music was born out of the grinding poverty of the late 19th century.

Holzman, 70, was born and raised in Zarate, a town in the Buenos Aires province. He now lives and works out of a cluttered Buenos Aires apartment just 10 blocks from where his hero, Gardel, grew up.

“Since childhood I have been passionate about tango, and I have always been involved with Jewish organizations,” he said. “I put two and two together and understood that the moment had finally come to form this orchestra. The Arabs received me very well. If they didn’t, I wouldn’t have continued with this idea.”

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