Praying Together

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owadays, you simply can’t miss the Achdus Israel community in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The “Moldes Street Empire,” as a friend of mine nicknamed it, has expanded into two buildings that house a primary school, a high school, a mikveh, a yeshivah ketanah, a yeshivah gedolah, a Bais Yaakov, three minyanim… but when my parents joined the kehillah, it was merely the yekkishe shul of the Belgrano neighborhood.

In 1929, a group of Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Germany decided they needed a place to daven in their new South American abode. They started a minyan and eventually bought property to build a shul. Here I must explain that Belgrano is not (or at least, it was not) a frum area, like the neighborhoods of Once or Flores, but rather home to completely assimilated Jews. But as my father always says, “Yekkehs love to feel different.” That decision not to settle in a more religious Jewish area would eventually lead to a vibrant chareidi community in a place that, until then, was a Torah desert.

My family came to Achdus Israel following my father’s search for a more yeshivish minyan. And I must say, it was a very awkward experience at the beginning. We used to attend the Beis Chabad in our neighborhood, but on the insistence of a good friend, we landed on Calle Moldes.

“Something new is going on there,” he told my father.