On today’s podcast we feature esteemed Jewish Uruguayan Anthropologist, teacher, fiction author, and Fulbright alumna, Dr. Teresa Porzecanski. During today’s episode, Dr. Porzecanski and Fulbright WHA D&I Liaison, Jeremy Gombin-Sperling talk about her history of anthropological work in Uruguay on the Uruguayan Jewish population. In tracing this genealogy, we learn about Dr. Porzecanski’s efforts to preserve and conserve the stories of many Uruguayan Jews through her qualitative research, and the impact it had. This discussion also led us into reflecting on the nation-state as a concept, how nations build narratives to advance certain goals often at the cost of those most marginalized by it. Finally, we talk about Dr. Porzecanski’s career as a writer of novels and how her work as a Jewish academic and a writer have informed each other.
What becomes clear in this conversation is that academic research can have a social consciousness. The stories we gather through research can do more than just preserve the diverse histories of communities and people; the sharing of stories are a mode to shift consciousness, to reevaluate much of what many of us thought to be true, to better realize the complexities of those around us and those who lived before us.
Books referenced by Dr. Porzecanski:
On today’s podcast we feature esteemed Jewish Uruguayan Anthropologist, teacher, fiction author, and Fulbright alumna, Dr. Teresa Porzecanski. During today’s episode, Dr. Porzecanski and Fulbright WHA D&I Liaison, Jeremy Gombin-Sperling talk about her history of anthropological work in Uruguay on the Uruguayan Jewish population. In tracing this genealogy, we learn about Dr. Porzecanski’s efforts to preserve and conserve the stories of many Uruguayan Jews through her qualitative research, and the impact it had. This discussion also led us into reflecting on the nation-state as a concept, how nations build narratives to advance certain goals often at the cost of those most marginalized by it. Finally, we talk about Dr. Porzecanski’s career as a writer of novels and how her work as a Jewish academic and a writer have informed each other.
What becomes clear in this conversation is that academic research can have a social consciousness. The stories we gather through research can do more than just preserve the diverse histories of communities and people; the sharing of stories are a mode to shift consciousness, to reevaluate much of what many of us thought to be true, to better realize the complexities of those around us and those who lived before us.
Books referenced by Dr. Porzecanski:
My Jewish story is one of refugees. Family on my dad's side escaped the antisemitism in what was once Galicia and is now part of Ukraine during the pogroms of the early 20th century and came to the United States. Family on my mother's side escaped Poland in the 1930s, before World War II, to allude the genocidal violence of the Nazis and found themselves in France, Brazil, Israel, and the U.S. Many, of course could not escape. As with other groups of refugees and migrants, many Jewish communities, including my own faced or complied with the pressures to assimilate to their new spaces, to forget or even abandoned certain religious, linguistic and cultural practices. One of the problems of assimilation is that it requires an intentional forgetting, a deliberate exclusion and erasure of the stories that explain how we got here and why we're here. In my case, this meant that there was much I did not know about my past until I started to ask questions. Even the brief story of my family I just shared is a product of many years of ambivalence, and recently those of renewed energy, interest, and a need to know who I am with this has led to is not just learning more about me, but of the millions of Jewish stories out there, those that reflect my own as part of the Ashkenazi diaspora in the late 19th and 20th century, and those from Sephardic, Mizrahim and other Jewish communities that in many cases, dates centuries before. So what happens when we begin to recover our stories to gather them, document them and revive them? How does the reclaiming of stories we are told to forget shift the narrative of not just understanding the community such stories represent, but also our understandings of the places we are in our history and therefore our collective future? Welcome to Fulbright Forward, a podcast that explores the concepts of diversity access, equity, inclusion and justice in the Fulbright Program and the work of Fulbright participants around the world. I am Jeremy Gombin-Sperling the Fulbright Diversity and Inclusion Liaison for programs in the Western Hemisphere. On today's podcast, we feature esteemed Jewish Uruguayan anthropologist, teacher, fiction author, and Fulbright alumna, Dr. Teresa Porzecanski. During today's episode, Dr. Porzecanski and I talk about her history of anthropological work and it would require on the Uruguayan Jewish population. In tracing this genealogy, we learn about Dr. Porzecanski's efforts to preserve the stories of many Uruguayan Jews through her qualitative research and the impact that it had. This discussion also led us into reflecting on the nation state as a concept, how nations build narratives to advance certain goals often at the cost of those most marginalized by it often intending to erase their stories. Finally, we talk about Dr. Porzecanski his career as a writer of novels, and how her work as a Jewish academic and author have informed each other. What becomes clear in this conversation is that academic research, fiction writing can all have a social consciousness. The stories we gather can do more than just preserve the diverse histories of communities and people. The sharing of stories are a mode to shift consciousness, to reevaluate much of what many of us thought to be true, to better realize the complexity of those around us, and those who lived before us. I hope you enjoy this wonderful episode with Dr. Porzecanski. Teresa, thank you so much for being part of this episode of Fulbright forward.
Teresa Porzecanski:Thanks to you for inviting me.
Jeremy Ryan Gombin-Sperling:I'm just curious if you could talk a little bit about just like, what experiences led you to your research and work in anthropology, and you know, to your Fulbright grant and just kind of what led you to begin to study the Jewish community?
Teresa Porzecanski:Yeah, of course, well, I had experiences of several anti, antisemitism, when I was a young girl in public school, two or three experiences. Then when I grew up, I realized that the Jewish community, in Uruguay and being a minority, you know, was receiving in subtle ways. I wouldn't say that it was apparent or really a manifestation, but in several ways, all these accumulated social prejudices that had been during the Second World War and before much before that, I first became a social worker. Because I thought, things I could change some things and help people to, you know, to read reality in a different way. But soon I realized that that the deep causes for for social prejudice had to be identified and researched in each society in each social group, very specifically. So I became an anthropologist and then also, I studied hermeneutics and also The communication tools and philosophy are also because I wanted to really discover why why societies create social prejudice, I guess ethnicities, minorities, small social groups that are seen as different, including the afrodescendant groups, or including religions, religious groups that are not traditional, or were not traditional in the history of Uruguay, and Latin America, like, for example, the beliefs that the slaves brought and recreated in Latin America. So all these questions led me to Anthropology and then then I realized that Anthropologycan give some hypotheses. But anthropology doesn't have the ultimate, the ultimate reason or explanation for these.
Jeremy Ryan Gombin-Sperling:Thank you so much. Yeah, no, I think that's a really helpful answer this kind of understanding what led you to anthropology as a way of doing this sort of analysis that came in-- sounds like from experiences you had, but also began to look at some of the different communities you wanted to help or support. I had a personal interest, of course, in doing an episode on this theme around, um, specifically understanding the history of Jewish communities in Latin America. And you know, one thing I know that a lot of your work, as you named earlier has revolved around doing that work and doing that study through an anthropological lens in Uruguay, particularly, you know, as me as a US as a US person who's Jewish, whose family, you know, has the diaspora story of escaping the Holocaust and terror in Poland. You know, many, most of my family ended up in the united states, but some also ended up in Brazil. And some of that was because the US was not letting in Jewish folks who are trying to escape at the time. And what I've learned is that I think many folks in the diaspora, especially those in the US don't always know about the history of the Jewish communities in Latin America, which is just not Ashkenazi communities, it's also Sephardic communities and other groups within the Jewish Diaspora that also came in waves prior to, you know, the 30s into the 40s. So I'm just curious, as you know, as a scholar, like, what do you believe are just important aspects or historical moments that people should know more about in order to understand the Latin American Jewish experience? And again, knowing it's a large question if you'd rather use or just speak to Uruguay, as the example and what you know, from your work absolutely fine, but really just want to explore that, that question of the important historical moments in sort of the development of Jewish communities throughout Latin America, or specifically Uruguay.
Teresa Porzecanski:Well, I was led to, to research and to make visible this situation minority. You know, like, I understood that prej- social prejudice has many reasons in order to recreate it. But one of the reasons is, one of the reasons is that people knows little or nothing about this minorities. So it is seen as something that they cannot understand, no, it's going to be created as a virtual enemy, or it's going to be created. I am a constructionist, that's why I'm speaking in this way, like, of all the hypotheses that are on this problem of social prejudice. The main thing is that you create this enemy, whatever it is, the enemy you create the people creates this enemy, in order to find their own identity as we, as we have sent us. And so So I started to make this of all the reasons to research on the Jewish community through qualitative research, that is oral history and autobiographies of people that I well, I have. Now this is the third edition of this book. Life started here, tuition me grant in your way. When they tell their own stories, it's visible that they weren't the voluntary migrants. They didn't come from Europe and because they wanted to make a better life as was, as you could say about the migrations before the First World War. No, these people came because they were pursued, because they couldn't stay, because they were expelled. And then the this concept of migrants in the case of the Jewish minority is more near to the concept of refugees. So not voluntary migrants, you could think of voluntary migrants when the Spaniards and the Italians came during the 19th century. So there's a saying in Uruguay, you know, where did the Uruguayans come from. And there's a famous author who said, they come from the boats, because that, they indigenous and native peoples had been, they were exterminated, their demography was very low, so they weren't many. And so this land was void practically. And so the Spaniards and the Italians, the two big immigrations during the 19th century were founders of the, of the country and creators of the culture. Okay, so this minority of Jewish immigrants that comes after the First World War, and during the 20s, and the 30s, were refugees that were expelled from their countries. And many times, they were at the limits, at the limits of being murdered or being exterminated by other means. So that's why what I showed through the, through the autobiographies is they really are telling how, how did they immigrate and why, why. In those times, of course, this parting was saying forever, I will not see you, like the old people had to stay there, old people, the elders have to stay. And there was a real parting and a real transculturation, I would say in their own life. The first edition was like, you know, immediately everybody, the, the Jewish community read about themselves also, and the non-Jewish people read about the Jewish community, which is a way of, you know, learning history, is a way of bringing conscience about who is who. Also, it had great, great consequences for the Jewish community, Ashkenazi, Spehardic, Mizrahim in Uruguay, because when the Jewish community was able to see that somebody wrote about them, and that their their own lives were important, as an experience, that is not only individual, but collective. This was a change for them. They acquire more strength to be eh in this new country. And they're their descendants also that are Uruguayan, got the ability to recognize that they have the right they have the right to be Jewish in a country that's free of cults. I don't know that the right translation is you can be of any religion, according to the Constitution in your work. So you also can be Jewish. Then when I realized that other minorities came in, to knock to my house and said, the Armenians, we want to do a bookexactly. Then Afrodescendants, so we want to do a book and you have to teach us and they did. This was a real experience, I was able to put on the general agenda, the ex, the existence, existence of different histories of different minorities, and they that change the whole were way of looking at the Uuguayan society instead of being a homogenous sort of collective, they could realize there were differences and the differences should be recognized and respected. So I did a book of history, of the exclusion of Afrodescendants. Also, I did this with the autobiographies and with oral history together with a colleague, Beatriz Santos and the Armenians did their own book. And then something wonderful happened, like the government decided to to honor this differences of minorities having Day of the Immigrant. With that in this day of the immigrant that was going to be every years of celebration. So so the thing that started as a research on the small Jewish community in your way that got bigger and bigger and changed in many ways, their way of interpreting differences and in my own way of seeing this, also brought a less possibilities of growing social prejudices. All things are related, one to the other. And when an intellectual presents real research that is academic, but it's also moving the conscience, the social conscience, I think that's why social sciences are for. Now they are not for writing papers that no one reads; is for changing the social reality is her letting prejudice not to exist? Isn't understanding isn't understanding who I am? Who are we? That that's it?
Jeremy Ryan Gombin-Sperling:I guess what I'd like to ask this back to the Jewish communityin Uruguay and your research is, it makes sense because we come from so many different places in the world and different ways of understanding Judaism. And that not not every Jewish person realizes the true diversity of Jewish people. And so I'm curious in your research, how that has impacted both your experience as an Uruguayan Jewish woman and also just like, how the Jewish communities perhaps within Uruguay have reflected on that as well too, of just like learning about that history, learning about that diversity and learning more about like the existence of other Jewish people, if that makes sense.
Teresa Porzecanski:Of course, the Jewish community didn't know except for their own intellectuals that weren't many, how they they came, why they came. They knew their own lives, they, each individual's, but they didn't know that the Sephardic had different ways of praying and different rituals from the Ashkenazi. They didn't know that there were Yiddish elementary schools that were making emphasis on the Yiddish learning and not the Hebrew lamb. They didn't know that the Mizrahim had different ways of performing the rituals, and practicing religions. So this, this book also made this affirmation. In a way this is kind of saying, okay, we are we but inside a we, there's a lot of differences. And there were groups that are Zionist, there are groups that are not Zio, Zionist, there are groups that are left wing groups that are against the left wing, there are groups are groups, por-Yiddish, and there are groups pro-Hebrew. And so this was able to be seen in the book. Then there were other students of mine, and colleagues that started to go on specifically, on the Jews that came from Germany. There were theses and PhD papers about specifically some of these subcommunities inside the Jewish community. So when I started the gateway to a lot of developments, and then also what I started as qualitative research was very much accepted, because you cannot work with statistics. It doesn't mean the statistics do not show what was the real reason why the Jews came to Latin America and to Uruguay. And then then we I had the opportunity two years ago to go to the University of Florida, who was doing an exhibition of the publication, publications of the Jewish communities, all over Latin America. We found all kinds of books in Hebrew, in English, of all kinds of ideologies, within Judaism, like those that are not religious, that those are very, very religious. So, what is important as you ask is to see this diversity, and not to stereotype a Jewish community as a homogeneous, collective, because they aren't. So every-- all these is a lot in terms that if my first book about this subject was in 1986, all that has happened in in the Uruguayan society since 1986 to the present there has to do with this new way of moving thoughts and moving the social constructions to, to... from homogeneity, to diversity, and indirectly to lower social prejudice.
Jeremy Ryan Gombin-Sperling:I think what's interesting for me is I've tried to do more to learn about the histories of my family. And I think what I've also learned is just a lot of... a lot of people in my family still carry a lot of trauma from growing up at a time where, you know, it will and this may lead into the next question of just the focus was, for example, my mom's generation of trying to just be as American as possible, trying to be as much in the U.S. as possible, to assimilate as much as possible because of past antisemitism abroad. And then new anti semitism, or maybe some of the same in the U.S. At the same time, the moment that I would ask the question to family of like, can you tell me the story, I would get the story. But it was just an interesting thing of just sometimes asking the question, because even with my father, I asked about our family's history, and he just said, "we never talked about it growing up." And so it's just one of those things that, you know, finding ways to access the stories is so important, because we don't want to-- I don't want them to be lost. And I think that's such a powerful thing that you have done such work to keep these stories alive for people in so many ways.
Teresa Porzecanski:One consequence of this research and this book, and all these change in the way of seeing the Uruguayans seeing themselves up as diversity, as a diverse society was at an elementary school, there was a new task that was given to the children that was a genealogic tree, no? Do your genealogical tree. Not the, not only the Jewish schools, but all schools, it started to be important for the teachers and for the persons that you know that are interested in origins and sources that the children could know where do they come from, where they come from? Who was your grandfather? He was Italian. Where did he come from? From this little town in Italy. Okay, what language did he speak? aAnd everything on that. So I think the notion of being foreign, it could be positive, is positive, is positive, in the way that the children started to learn that they weren't born in, like a plant. They are not plants, they had their roots. And the rotts was, well, the grandfather and great grandfath- fathers, and also including the Jewish people. So every person that's Jewish now, in your way, will tell you okay, my grandfather came from me from Ukraine. Where in Ukraine? Well, this little town, this schtetl in Ukraine, that doesn't exist anymore. And so this is a kind of education that children in all countries should have.
Jeremy Ryan Gombin-Sperling:Yeah, I mean, that is, that is not part of, I know, a lot of people's experiences actually being asked to sort of really do that building of your history at such a young age, which I feel like can deeply shape you know, how you also value yourself if you're able to learn more about that. Moving on to the topic of Uruguay, I think, just in learning more about you and doing some research, you know, I came across some different writings about just even how you have uh taken time to sort of look at Uruguay as sort of a nation state, the political project of constructing what is Uruguayanness, what does it mean to be Urugyayan? And, and a lot of times that what that does is it creates narratives and stories, some that have truth, some that may be to push political means or certain goals. And I know that you've done a lot of these studies is you've named right through the extent setting the experiences of others groups and communities that have been marginalized by the state, whether that's women, indigenous people, you've talked a lot about Afr descendant communities. So I'm just curious, like, how does that work you've done on sort of studying the kind of history will require as a nation state, how is that related to or just informed the study you've done of Jewish diasporic communities?
Teresa Porzecanski:Yeah, well, you started studying, studying, researching minorities and you and you and researching the whole society. Because for example, if you compare your way to, to Peru, or to Mexico, right the two big nations that I have a lot of native, native citizens coming from surviving cultures after the conquest, but Uruguay doesn't have that. Doesn't have native. Yes Uruguay wanted eh, the Uruguayan society after the end of the dictatorship. They created m,yths, you know, they wanted to be more Latin American because they were called like, European, like a European country. They did-- you wouldn't come, you wouldn't see any natives. So where are the natives? They have been exterminated. They were very few. So you're surprised by the emergence of this, like clubs or ONGS that are revindicated, revindicate. Reclaiming, for, for for the native identity. We are descendants from the Charruas, we are descendants from the Guaranis. Actually, the Guaranis, we're not completely exterminated. And some of them could live inside the Catholic societies. But they are not a number that could change this European face of the Uruguayan society. But where I then started studying why the Uruguayans needed myths, myths with which be more like the the nations in Latin America that really had really a great big component of native cultures like Mexico where they speak more than 300 hundred dialects, Peru, Bolivia, even a part of Brazil in the north. So I started to write a why the Uruguayans wants wanted to be more like the other nations of Latin America. And that's because they had a sense of guilt. And there were then the artists were start, start to write some dramas, some plays about extermination, the last one extermination of natives at Salsipuedes. Salsipuedes is a place. They were trapped and exterminated by the descendants of Spaniards. And when I wrote this, I realized I was researching like, like the constructions that societies do in order to solve eh, problems of blame or guilty, or insecurities. Okay, that changed the whole Uruguayan mentality. I wouldn't say that my writings, not only me, is what I work with two great important historians Gerardo Caetano and Barrán. We wrote three books about the sensibility. What are the sensibilities? The way of feelings, the way the society thinks about itself. Okay, so so that was very important, especially when the dictatorship ended. And there was a need of reframe the national identity. Who are we? So? Are we really democratic? Are we really not religious like atheism in the government? Do we have beliefs? What are those beliefs to? Do? We wish that the native what would., wouldn't have been exterminated? So, so all these constructions were a matter of research. So understanding what is Uruguay also gave me light into why they should have construct prejudice. And what were the problems they have to be part of this kind of European, so different from Middle America from, from these big countries with a lot of native population.
Jeremy Ryan Gombin-Sperling:What I hear what I hear you're talking about is this series of dictatorships that happened in Latin America in the 20th century in particular, right? You know, Uruguay being one of those countries as well, too, but just sort of like the rebuilding moment of like, how do we kind of recover? It sounds like also, there's these questions of what is our kind of like, collective guilt In some ways? You know, what, what questions do we have to resolve? And I think what you have named to is like, what myths or stories do we either have to not necessarily recreate, but keep reproducing, to make this nation story a "reality." And I use that with quotes just to say like, as you've named, right, like, every person's experience is different based on who they are. So that reality of being Uruguayan may feel much more accessible or real to some people than others, depending on what their experiences in a community but also as they're treated by the state.
Teresa Porzecanski:Yeah, I guess you just said it very well, also, what is the mirror in which you look, you're, you look at yourself as a society. Uruguayans have had, according to my point of view, had to remake their own identity after the end of the dictatorship. There are many things that happened during the dictatorship that showed the country the way they were interpreting themselves. So many people didn't want to recognize that they collaborated with a dictatorship. And not everybody thought it, it was so bad, because before that, we had a years of terrorism, years of how do you say, disorder? Then there's also, there was a research, not by me, but other like reporters about how not honest they were. So that now everything is coming to light, because there was time enough for the people to confess how they worked, and where they get the money, how they, what they do with the stolen money, stolen from the government, and stolen from the private sphere. And so everything is coming to light now. It's not a beautiful photograph, it's ugly. It's ugly.
Jeremy Ryan Gombin-Sperling:When you say the mirror, I think it makes me think that if you are going to look at the mirror, you have to be ready to see everything. You can't just look at some pieces and ignore the rest. Working off of this sort of discussion, I think I'm curious in the work that you've done and even understan, even just this, this different type of analyses you put forward around the Uruguayan nation state like where where do you understand as Jewish Uruguayans kind of seeing themselves, right, and the different understandings of race, of gender, of class, of nationality within Uruguay. Knowing that, of course, like Jewish people, like any community carry multiple identities and different experiences that we, as we discussed, but I'm just curious, like, you know, because I think, obviously, the U.S. is different in many ways. But you know, we have this very specific understandings of race and gender. Like we've had a lot of conversations in the US about, you know, are white Jewish people white, things of that nature. So I'm just curious, like, in Uruguay, yeah, what, when it comes to these conversations of how Jewish people see themselves within the nation state, what does that look like? Or what are those conversations'
Teresa Porzecanski:There's a lot of assimilation, as the new generations, there's a lot. And also, there's a lot of going back to the rituals and becoming more religious. That's the other trend as the young people, like, trying to go back to the roots of Judaism. Judaism has certain values and ways of thinking and interpreting the world that that certain the new generation, some of them, they don't want to lose, then it is easier to adjust and to disappear. That's easier, because then you don't care about antisemitism, you don't care about anything. But the foundation of of Israel was very important for the Jewish community in Uruguay. It was a small community but many people decided, well, I have to collaborate with Israel. It's, it's not any country. It's not a country like all other countries. It's a country that for many is a result of this long, long, long waiting to come back to coming back. For the very religious is, is it's a prophecy that theJewish people would go back to this place. Not to any place, to this place. And so there was a lot of Alliyah, from the Jewish community, to Israel, especially young people. There were these Jewish younger youth organizations like, Hashomer Hatzair, like Idema, like all kinds of youth organizations that were preparing to come to live in the kibbutzim. There's going to be this place where there is not any antisemitism. So. so there was a lot of Alliyah from the Jewish so it was from 40,000 people like in the middle of the of the 50s or at 1950, 4, 40,000 Jewish people. They descended to 12,000 because their elders would stay. I don't say that everyone in the Jewish community came to Israel. I'm saying that they left for different places, mainly to Israel. But some of them went to the U.S., some of them to Europe, some of them to look for their roots in Germany, where they have been expelled in Spain, where they have been expelled from, right? And so that's, that's why Judaism is so interesting historically. Because there's a lot of things going on at the same time to to build this kind of identity. Who are we?
Jeremy Ryan Gombin-Sperling:You know, something I think I think about two, which is something I think you talked about in your answer is also like, where is our home? Yeah. You know, which is an interesting question to, I think, for any Jewish person to kind of ponder because, you know, we have the power of making any place our home, and what you also referencing is the fact that there are lots of people who, in the wake of the end of World War II and other things, were trying to either find new places where antisemitism did not exist or also rebuild other places as well.
Teresa Porzecanski:Yes, yeah. Yes. So so it's looking for the promised land. And this promised land is in your mind, because in the real world, it's not so easy to find the promised land, but it's a nice idea for Judaism, the looking for the promised land. And this diaspora is, the almost, is a way, a school where we all have learned during millennials, a lot of things we have learned a lot of things, things all over the world, as all cultures, and then bringing this back to this promised land.
Jeremy Ryan Gombin-Sperling:I know you've done a lot of different kinds of work, that your your your academic work is not strictly on anthropology, you've also been a writer of novels and poetry. How was doing that work formed everything else that you've done?
Teresa Porzecanski:Yeah, well, they both informing each other. They just like academic work has its rules, it's meth- methodology. But at this other way of interpreting reality is fiction, it's fiction. All fiction still has some touch with real experiences, there is not a fiction completely divorced, by personal experiences, even if those experiences are not shown realistically, in a work of art. I've written about seven novels. They all have a Jewish character, or more than one. And it's funny because that many writers, many Jewish writers are maybe afraid or shy to write with about Jewish characters. In being born in Uruguay or in Latin America. So of course, I had this need to write stories about, that are connected to my personal life, either my Sephardic family on my mother's side, or on my father's side, but so transformed that you wouldn't recognize it. But of course, then then there is this relationship, or I feel there is this relationship with these characters that I, I've, I've met so well. So I um, what is uh, rather is surprising for me that all the prizes I was awarded in Uruguay they don't ever mention I am Jewish. He'll say, Well, they say Teresa Porzecanski wrote this novel that analyzed the text. They should write, someone should write that I'm really Jewish. And because also the novel is a Jewish novel. This is not any novel. And this shows how I think they don't touch this subject. It's a way of putting into a void the subject of my Jewish identity, the fact that led me to write about this Jewish characters. It's not a coincidence. So I'm very grateful for their words and everything. But I would have liked somebody to study this relationship between being Jewish and going into specific subjects.
Jeremy Ryan Gombin-Sperling:What would you like in the audience listening to this episode to take way from the conversation, whether that's a particular point you've made a mark, just something you want people to even think about who are
Teresa Porzecanski:Yeah, well, the obvious thing is that the listening? Jewish migration is not just any migration. It was, it came to Uruguay, because of specific reasons. They were refugees. The government in those years, would forbid, some, some boats and some people to get into Uruguay like denying the visas, the visas, for getting into Uruguay. So, this shows how the Uruguayana society wasn't different of all societies with this accumulation of prejudice. And when what I would like to the people to understand is that social prejudicethis is a construction of stereotypes, a simplification and generalization that no society can afford to have to maintain. Because it's dividing. It's going against the community, and it's dangerous. It's dangerous. And I want to thank you. I will recommend the Fulbright Commission to go on awarding these scholarships, I think they are very useful. So thank you, a lot. Jeremy,
Jeremy Ryan Gombin-Sperling:Thank you so much, Teresa, for your time today. And that's all for this episode of Fulbright forward. Thank you so much for listening. For a list of resources mentioned in today's episode, you can go to the Fulbright Forward website hosted on our Buzzsprout page. Remember also, you can subscribe to Fullbright Forward through your favorite podcast app like Apple podcasts or Spotify, as well as follow the podcast and Instagram. Again I'm Jeremy Gombin-Sperling Fulbright Diversity and Inclusion liaison for programs in the Western Hemisphere. Be well stay safe, and until next time,