(Jewish Group) Punta del Este, Uruguay, is one of South America's ritziest resort cities.

Punta del Este, Uruguay, is one of South America’s ritziest resort cities. Its Jewish population has doubled during the pandemic.

The upscale Uruguayan coastal resort city of Punta del Este checks a lot of boxes for 18-year-old Argentine Sofia Grosz: gorgeous beaches, vibrant nightlife, a hub for many of her Jewish school friends from Buenos Aires.

“Coming here, it’s almost a tradition in our family,” said Grosz, who belongs to the famed Hacoaj Jewish sport and community center back home and graduated from a Jewish high school last year.

She’s not alone — Punta del Este has long been a haven for tens of thousands of Jews, many of them Argentines, each summer (which ended recently in the southern hemisphere).

In addition to the ritzy beach attractions — people like Mark Zuckerberg, Ralph Lauren and Shakira have vacationed here — the city’s laidback mood, natural beauty and low crime rate has been a selling point to Latin American Jews for decades. Jewish developers, whose presence can be traced back to Argentine businessman Mauricio Litman, who founded the Cantegrill Country Club in 1950, were also heavily involved in the city’s physical growth. The Cantegrill still stands, full of Jews who play golf or cards, and now there are things like a Jewish film festival and a local kosher pizza restaurant, opened in 2012 by Levi Shemtov, nephew of the well-known Washington, D.C.-based rabbi of the same name.

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Anyone ever been to Uruguay?