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Ilan Stavans is one of the best known and most prolific Latino academics working today. In preparation for writing Seventh Heaven, Stavans spent five years traveling through Latin America in search of what defines the Jewish communities in the region. The roots of these communities date back to the expedition of Columbus. Stavans visits Mexico, Argentina, Cuba, Peru, Brazil, and Venezuela, and he talks to families of the desaparecidos in Buenos Aires, to ""Indian Jews"" in central Mexico, and to neo-Nazis in Patagonia. He also visits Spain, to understand the long-term effects of the Inquisition, the American Southwest, habitat of ""secret Jews,"" and Israel, where immigrants from Latin America have reshaped the Jewish state. Along the way, he looks for the proverbial ""seventh heaven,"" which, according to the Talmud, is the closest layer to the divine in which the meaning of life in general, and Jewish life in particular, becomes clearer.