Argentine Rabbi Sergio Bergman handily won a seat on the Buenos Aires municipal legislature; he garnered some 45 percent of the vote, more than triple the total of the second-place finisher.
Bergman, the senior rabbi of the traditional Congregacion Israelita Argentina, is the founder of Active Memory, a group that demonstrated every Monday for a decade in front of Argentina’s Supreme Court seeking justice for the victims of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center.
Bergman, a prominent spiritual leader in Buenos Aires, was not allowed to use the title “rabbi” on the ballot. Still, after being tapped by Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri to lead his PRO Party’s list for the city legislature, he obtained nearly half the votes in a race featuring 10 candidates. — jta