Argentina’s Jews Pray For Lost Submarine – Still Radio Silence After A Week
(JTA) — Argentina’s chief rabbi held a prayer service for the return of a missing submarine and its crew of 44.
The country has been living with tension and uncertainty for the last week, since the ARA San Juan submarine was reported missing in the Atlantic Ocean.
On Tuesday, Chief Rabbi of Argentina Gabriel Davidovich held the special prayer service at the AMIA Jewish community center building in Buenos Aires, where the superior rabbinate operates, joined by the executive boards of the AMIA and CUJA, or Jewish Argentine United Campaign.
AMIA tweeted a prayer asking God to have “mercy on our brothers lost at sea, who are in desolation and captivity, and bring them from affliction to relief, from darkness to light, and lead them now, quickly, to life and to freedom.”
From the province of Cordoba, located in the center of the country, the rabbi of the Israelite Union Centre of Cordoba, Marcelo Polakoff wrote a song of hope in support of the crew titled “Looking to See the Sun,” and uploaded it to YouTube.
The governments of Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, France, Norway, Peru, the United Kingdom and the United Stated have sent ships, airplanes and submarines to provide logistic support and information exchange during the search for the missing submarine.
The Argentine Navy lost contact with the ARA San Juan submarine on November 15, shortly after the captain of the submarine reported a failure in the electric system. It is estimated that the sub had enough oxygen on board to last a week from the last transmission.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO