The is the umbrella and central organization of Uruguay's Jewish community. Established in 1940 it gathers 29 Jewish Zionist institutions, serving as the community's political representative in official events and conducts all contact with authorities. The presidency of the committee rotates among the four most important communities and serves for a period of two years. The current president since 2023 is Roby Schindler. It is affiliated to the

World Jewish Congress The World Jewish Congress (WJC) is an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations, founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in August 1936. According to its mission statement, the World Jewish Congress's main purpose is to act as ...

and the Latin American Jewish Congress.

History

The Jewish presence in Uruguay dates back to the 16th century, with the settlement of ''conversos''. However, significant Jewish immigration began at the end of the 19th century with the arrival of

Sephardic Jews Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendant ...

from Argentina and Brazil. In the first decades of the 20th century,

Ashkenazi Jews Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE. They traditionally speak Yiddish, a language ...

from Eastern Europe began to arrive in Uruguay to escape pogroms and poverty. A large part of them settled in the

Villa Muñoz Villa Muñoz - Retiro is a ''barrio'' (neighbourhood or district) of Montevideo, Uruguay, bordering Aguada and Reducto to the west, La Figurita to the north, La Comercial to the east and Cordón to the south. The neighborhood originated at th ...

neighborhood of

Montevideo Montevideo (, ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2023 census, the city proper has a population of 1,302,954 (about 37.2% of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...

, where synagogues and schools were established, turning the area into the nucleus of the Uruguayan Jewish community. Due to the differences in origin and language, the Jews in Uruguay merged into different communities: the Israelite Community (Kehilá), the Hungarian Israelite Community and the Sephardic Israelite Community, all three founded in 1932, and the Nueva Congregación Israelita, founded in 1936. Due to the rise of Nazism in Europe, Uruguayan Jews grouped together to create an organization that would bring together and politically represent the entire community. On December 11, 1940, with the union of all the Jewish communities that had existed since previous years, the Central Israelite Committee of Uruguay was created.

References

External links

Official website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Central Israelite Committee of Uruguay 1940 establishments in Uruguay Jewish Uruguayan history Jewish political organizations Jews and Judaism in Uruguay Jewish organizations established in 1940 Religious organizations established in 1940 Zionist organizations World Jewish Congress