Paulette Kershenovich Schuster

The Syrian Jewish Community in Mexico City in a Comparative Context: Between a Rock and a Hard Place Paulette Kershenovich Schuster

?The Syrian-Jewish Community in Mexico City in a Comparative Context? is a doctoral dissertation that deals primarily with the women of the Syrian-Jewish community living in Mexico City, Mexico. In order to show similarities or differences as to socio-economic class, gender roles, and ethnicity, selected comparisons are made between the Syrian-Jewish and the Lebanese communities. The dissertation interweaves personal narratives with history to portray the profound influence of gender, religion, immigration, culture, family and food in shaping the identity and sense of empowerment of these women. It is the direct aim of this study to delineate key events in a chronological fashion to show how women have been involved in immigration and settlement processes and how they have contributed to each of the two communities studied here; investigate their subsequent involvement in kinship, social networks and mutual-aid organizations; consider how that participation led to other forms of involvement in the public and private spheres; and their contribution to the formation and the contemporary structure of the Lebanese and Syrian-Jewish communities in Mexico.