Chabad Lubavitch of Argentina

Chabad-Lubavitch in Argentina: Jabad Lubavitch Argentina, founded by the emissary Berel Baumgarten from 1955 and led since 1978 by Rabbi Tzvi Grunblatt from Agüero 1164, Buenos Aires

Chabad Lubavitch of Argentina
Type	Jewish religious organisation (Chabad-Lubavitch)
Founded	1955
Headquarters	Buenos Aires
Location	Agüero 1164, C1425 Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires
Area served	Argentina
Key people	Tzvi Grunblatt (director general), Eduardo Elsztain (honorary president)
Website	https://www.jabad.org.ar

Chabad Lubavitch of Argentina (Jabad Lubavitch Argentina) is the Chabad-Lubavitch organisation in Argentina. Its first emissary, Rabbi Berel Baumgarten, was sent by Menachem Mendel Schneerson in 1955, and since 1978 it has been run by Rabbi Tzvi Grunblatt and his wife Shterna from Agüero 1164, Buenos Aires. Chabad's world headquarters lists 58 Chabad institutions in Argentina, the largest number in Latin America. President Javier Milei has attended its public events and has repeatedly visited Schneerson's grave in New York.

History

According to a 2015 account published by eJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Berel Baumgarten was sent to Argentina as the first Chabad emissary in 1955, after asking Schneerson for a blessing before a business trip to South America; he settled in Buenos Aires, where he worked as a rosh yeshiva at the non-Hasidic Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim, as a teacher, rabbi and chaplain of a Jewish old people's home and orphanage, and received a monthly subsidy from Lubavitch headquarters until his death in 1978. The Jewish news agency Itón Gadol, reporting a 2018 memorial, said that Baumgarten toured several Latin American countries in 1955 and settled in Buenos Aires in 1957.

Tzvi Grunblatt, born in Argentina in 1954 to Holocaust survivors, studied under Baumgarten at Chofetz Chaim, went to the Lubavitch yeshiva in New York in 1969 and was ordained there in April 1978. He returned to Buenos Aires in 1978 with his wife, Shterna (née Kazarnovsky), at the community's request and with Schneerson's agreement. A 2020 interview on lubavitch.com gives 1987 as the year his shlichut began. According to the Matanel Foundation, the first Chabad branch outside Buenos Aires opened in Tucumán in 1980.

Grunblatt told eJewishPhilanthropy that the military government checked whether a planned 1980 Lag BaOmer parade in Buenos Aires was political before allowing it, and that undercover agents attended. He also said that during the 1982 Falklands War the military sent two rabbis as chaplains to Jewish soldiers: Grunblatt and his brother Noson. Grunblatt said that he decided in 1983, with Schneerson's encouragement, to build new premises; the 50,000 sq ft building was completed in 1990. According to Grunblatt, the Australian businessman Yosef Gutnick pledged $200,000 in 1987, and the financier Alberto Sued tore up the project's promissory notes.

In 2003 the Buenos Aires city government authorised the Asociación Jabad Lubavitch Argentina to put up Hanukkah menorahs and hold events in public spaces, including the Plaza de la República Oriental del Uruguay, the 9 de Julio avenue, Recoleta and Almagro. The central public candle-lighting in that square has since become an annual event.

Organisation and key people

Chabad's world headquarters lists the national headquarters, Chabad Lubavitch Argentina HQ, at Agüero 1164, with Rabbi Tzvi Grunblatt at the head of a list of some 20 rabbis. In 2020 lubavitch.com reported that 35 Chabad centres in ten cities had opened under Grunblatt's leadership, with nine Jewish day schools, a foster care programme and three soup kitchens, and an annual budget of $12 million. In 2015 eJewishPhilanthropy described the network as 52 synagogues, schools and social-service organisations.

According to eJewishPhilanthropy, the businessman Eduardo Elsztain is honorary president of Chabad of Argentina; Grunblatt said that the Elsztain family began studying with him in 1979. Other early benefactors named by Grunblatt were Abraham Gales, a tailor who made uniforms for the military junta's generals, the Sephardic community leader Beto Emsani, and Tito and Chipy Meta and their children, whom he described as principal benefactors of Chabad in Argentina.

Institutions

Chabad's world headquarters lists centres in Buenos Aires (Capital Federal and Greater Buenos Aires), Bahía Blanca, Concordia, Córdoba, La Plata, Mar del Plata, Martínez, Morón, Nordelta, Pilar, Resistencia, Rosario, Salta, San Carlos de Bariloche, San Fernando, San Miguel de Tucumán, Santa Fe and Tigre. Institutions listed include:

• Cheder Oholey Chinuch, Agüero 1172, Buenos Aires, and the Oholey Chinuch girls' school, Boulogne Sur Mer 626. A $25 million campus for the boys' school opened its first stage in late 2023; Grunblatt said it would educate more than 800 boys a year.
• Yeshivas Lubavitch and a yeshiva gedola, based at Agüero 1164.
• Editorial Kehot Lubavitch Sudamericana, the movement's Spanish-language publisher, Agüero 1092, Buenos Aires, run by Rabbi Nosson Grunblatt.
• Ieladeinu, a child-protection programme, Tucumán 3177, Buenos Aires.
• La Escuela de Hilel and Beit Jabad Villa Devoto/Villa del Parque, Helguera 2329, Buenos Aires.
• Escuela y Comunidad Wolfsohn Tabacinic, Amenábar 2972, Buenos Aires.
• ISEJ (International Center Young Jews – Chabad), a youth and young professionals' organisation at Agüero 1164 and O'Higgins 2358, Buenos Aires.
• Centro Leoded, Jean Jaurès 314, Buenos Aires, run by Rabbi Moshe Blumenfeld.
• Machon Or Chaya, a women's seminary, Ecuador 572, Buenos Aires.
• Synagogue and community centres (Beit Jabad) in Almagro, Barracas, Barrio Norte, Belgrano, Caballito, Chacarita, Flores, Floresta, Once, Palermo, Paternal, Puerto Madero, Recoleta, Villa Crespo and Villa Urquiza, and a centre for tourists in Congreso.
• Provincial centres, including Beit Jabad Córdoba (Sucre 1378, Córdoba), Beit Jabad Rosario (Mendoza 1572, Rosario), Beit Jabad Tucumán (Lamadrid 752, San Miguel de Tucumán), Beit Jabad La Plata (Calle 16 no. 732, La Plata), Beit Jabad Bahía Blanca (Chiclana 763, Bahía Blanca) and Chabad Bariloche (Palacios 480, San Carlos de Bariloche).

Ieladeinu (Hebrew for "our children") was described by Itón Gadol in 2009 as a programme to protect children of the Argentine Jewish community who suffer abuse; it then cared for 257 children through two day centres, four homes and a foster programme, with more than 100 professional staff. In April 2011 the six-storey "Zully Goldfard" building at Tucumán 3238, headquarters of Ieladeinu and the Fundación Jabad, was opened in the presence of the head of the Buenos Aires city government, Mauricio Macri, and the national health minister, Juan Manzur.

Registered entities

The Argentine tax authority's register (ARCA, formerly AFIP) could not be searched directly; the following is taken from a commercial site that republishes its records and from official gazettes.

• Asociación Israelita Argentina Tzeire Agudath Jabad – legal person, CUIT 30-63386545-7, articles of association dated 10 December 1968, tax address Agüero 1164, CP 1425, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. It is VAT-exempt and registered as an employer; its listed activities are religious organisations and nurseries.
• Asociación Jabad Lubavitch Argentina – the name under which the city government authorised Hanukkah events in 2003.
• Fundación Jabad Lubavitch Argentina (also "La Fundación de Jabad") – social-aid foundation, based with Ieladeinu in the Tucumán Street building.

Funding and state support

In 2009 the Minister of Social Development, Alicia Kirchner, and the economist Bernardo Kliksberg agreed a set of social policies with the Fundación Jabad Lubavitch Argentina for vulnerable and abused children, after visiting its headquarters and Ieladeinu's day centres and homes. The national health minister said at the 2011 opening that the government had wanted "to contribute" to the new building. In 2011 Ieladeinu's development director, Alejandro Altman, told Clarín that subsidies from the city (and sometimes the province) covered only 10 per cent of its budget, with the rest coming from monthly sponsors, agreements with health centres and donations in kind; that year Ieladeinu won $500,000 in an international competition. In November 2025 the DAIA said that Jabad Lubavitch Argentina had "various working agreements" with SEDRONAR, the national drugs-policy agency.

Private donors named by Grunblatt include Eduardo Elsztain, the Meta family, Yosef Gutnick and Alberto Sued.

Controversies

In January 2008 Perfil reported that Alex Rubinstein, whose daughter was marrying the non-Jewish footballer Diego Placente, said that Ieladeinu had refused wedding-gift donations because the institution's name would appear on a card enclosed with the invitation to a mixed marriage. In a statement signed by Grunblatt, Jabad denied any discrimination and said that it did not accept appearing on a card attached to the invitation to an event "directly at odds with the principles of Judaism".

In November 2025 the journalist Laura Vergara, who has written about Jabad Lubavitch's influence in Argentine politics, told Radio Realpolitik that she had received a private message from Rabbi Yossi Turk of Jabad Córdoba proposing a personal meeting, which she described as intimidating and had certified by a notary; she said Turk later declined her offer of a public interview. The report did not include a response from Turk.

Politics and Israel links

Javier Milei, raised a Roman Catholic, visited Schneerson's grave (the Ohel) in New York before and after his election as president in 2023 and has returned since; in September 2024, on his fourth visit, he was accompanied by his sister Karina Milei and his ambassador to Israel, Rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish. On 12 December 2023, two days after taking office, Milei lit the first candle at Jabad's central Hanukkah ceremony in Plaza República Oriental del Uruguay with the head of the city government, Jorge Macri, accompanied by the security minister Patricia Bullrich, the defence minister Luis Petri and Supreme Court judges. In July 2024 he sat unannounced in the audience at Jabad's tribute to Schneerson at the Centro Cultural Kirchner marking 30 years since his death; the Israeli ambassador, Eyal Sela, the president of the AMIA, Amos Linetzky, and the businessmen Eduardo Elsztain and César Wengrower also attended. Ynet reported that Rabbi Chaim Oirechman, the Chabad emissary in Puerto Madero, coordinated the visit, and that Sela recited a psalm for the hostages and soldiers at the start of the event. Perfil noted that Milei's personal rabbi, Wahnish, belongs to a different Orthodox stream from Chabad, and that his link with the economist Darío Epstein had been key to his new relationships with influential businessmen such as Adrián Werthein and Eduardo Elsztain.

See also

• Chabad-Lubavitch movement
• Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Argentina
• Comunidad Israelita Ortodoxa of Argentina
• Chabad Lubavitch of Uruguay
• Chabad Lubavitch of Chile
• Chabad Lubavitch of Brazil