August 14: Jewish Cowboys

On this date in 1889, 130 Russian Jewish families arrived in Argentina on the S.S. Weser and formed the settlement of Moisés Ville, named for Baron Maurice de Hirsch. Their presence and early rough-going inspired de Hirsch to create the Jewish Colonization Association, which would soon help support more than 200,000 Jews on agricultural settlements in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Palestine and the United States. Between 1906 and 1912, approximately 13,000 Jews immigrated to Argentina every year from Europe, Morocco and the Ottoman Empire. More than a quarter of a million Jews now live in the country. Moisés Ville became the best-known home of the gauchos Judios (Jewish cowboys) who worked the land in Argentina in that period. Today, the town has some 2,500 residents.

“My son I have lost, but not my heir; humanity is my heir.” —Maurice de Hirsch (upon the death of his only son, Lucien, in 1887)

Watch the trailer for Mark Freeman’s 1989 documentary, The Yidishe Gauchos, narrated by Eli Wallach