EnviroJews Avant La Lettre
The Wonders of America
By Jenna Weissman Joselit
When it comes to talk of sustainable agriculture and eco-Judaism, the history of American Jewry’s attempts to create an equally sustainable class of Jewish “agriculturists” has gotten lost in the shuffle. That’s a shame, because the story of how largely urban immigrants from Eastern Europe found themselves harvesting beans and cultivating chickens is a whopping good yarn, as well as a heartening tale of social uplift.
At a time early in the 20th century when thousands of impoverished immigrants sought a toehold in the New World, philanthropically minded organizations such as the Baron de Hirsch Fund made a point of getting them onto the land. Tilling the soil, it was widely believed, would not only relieve the congestion of the immigrant neighborhood, but also transform the neighborhood’s “alien” residents into able-bodied, hard-working Americans at one with the natural order. An experiment in social engineering designed to stand on its head the widespread notion that a Jew with a hoe was an unnatural creature, the efforts of the Baron de Hirsch Society and its offshoot, the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society, seemed so novel, so downright improbable, that the contemporary, non-Jewish press had a field day, filling its pages with detailed accounts of life on the farm.
With barely contained amusement, it wrote of the “well-ordered” and “cleanly” characteristics of Jewish farming communities, of “rosy children everywhere” and of the absence of Yiddish signage — a pointed contrast to Manhattan’s Lower East Side in virtually every respect.
Eager to make the case that farming was a “peaceful way of life,” the Baron de Hirsch Fund set its sights on Woodbine, N.J. That rural and southernmost part of the state “for some occult reason, has been the site of an unusual number of social and sociological experiments,” The New York Times reported in 1902. But the reason for establishing a farming community or “colony,” as it was commonly called, in that neck of the woods was not too hard to find: Woodbine was bound to the affluent seaside communities of Atlantic City and Elberon, N.J., as well as to the greater metropolitan area by train — the West Jersey and Seashore branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad — making it easy to get its bushels of grapes, corn, cabbages and fruits to market.
From that perspective, Woodbine made good economic sense. But the well-intentioned folks at Baron de Hirsch — no farmers, they — didn’t reckon with the sandy, swampy and inconsistent soil or, for that matter, with the swarms of mosquitoes that tormented the locals every summer. (“The mosquito output is simply beyond the power of measurement,” an eyewitness related in 1912.) They also didn’t reckon with the fierce show of independence demonstrated by Woodbine’s feisty residents, who were quick to complain about this, that and the other thing. The community’s archives, which can be consulted at the American Jewish Historical Society, are filled to the brim with laments: about the weather, lackluster crops and the officious ways of the colony’s administrators. Chafing under the latter’s heavy-handedness and elaborate web of rules, residents sometimes took matters into their own hands. In 1909, when the
Baron de Hirsch Fund nixed the idea of showing movies, fearful lest their putatively salacious content undermine Woodbine’s moral integrity, disgruntled residents, signing their names in Yiddish, got up a petition in protest. Ultimately, the powers that be bowed to the “wishes of the people” and agreed to hold occasional movie screenings, provided that a committee composed of both locals and administrators would vet the films’ content.
In the end, the farming life was no match for the movies and other perquisites of modernity. Despite the “homely blessings that agriculture bestows on its votaries,” as one enraptured champion would have it, the Jewish agriculturist was unable to keep his offspring down on the farm for too long. City life, and its manifold possibilities, beckoned alluringly, rendering most Jewish farming colonies a one-generation phenomenon. All the same, Woodbine and thousands of its counterparts throughout the nation deserved their day in the sun. While they lasted, these enterprises not only contributed materially to America’s bounty, but also underscored the Jewish community’s commitment to improving the lives of its members, and its collective belief in the regenerative possibilities of the soil.
Click here to see images from the Philadelphia Jewish Archive’s exhibit “Woodbine, Jew Jersey: Fifteen Acres and a Shul”
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Thank you, Jenna, for this wonderful history that returns to me my beloved grandmother with whom, one weekend, in the fifties, on the lam from NYC, we shared a room with meals on a chicken farm in exotic NJ.
Today, in Atlanta, an eco-tikkun olam project, not with chickens though with gardens and recycled kudzu, the "vine that ate the south," fellow Jewish volunteers and others are reconnecting to the land many new southeast Asian refugee neighbors. The project aims to restore their dignity while they harvest some food and income using technologies they have known for generations.
Different eras, different populations. Similar questing to rebuild lives of exiled peoples.
Watch the video (5:16 minutes) Atlanta's Bhutanese refugees: Weaving beyond survival http://only-connect.blogspot.com/2009/10/atlantas-bhutanese-refugees-moving.html
As sweet as that recollection is -- there is more to it. Post World War II as surviving Jews, particularly from Eastern Europe, were making their way to America --and also those being released from DP camps -- many were settled in Southern Jersey in the Woodbine area. They became chicken farmers and became known for selling eggs. As they became more affluent, many of them moved to Lakewood, NJ -- where many live to this day
The best way to be an eco-Jew now is to eat vegetarian. The livestock industry, according to a new study in the current issue of World Watch, contributes 51% - a majority! - of greenhouse gases leading to global warming. Eating vegetarian is also better for other enviro-ills as well as your health and, of course, the health of the animals.
Please visit The Vegetarian Mitzvah at www.brook.com/jveg and Eco-Eating at www.brook.com/veg for much more information.
I also encourage people to view A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World, a 1-hour free documentary narrated Theodore Bikel.
www.ASacredDuty.org
The most disturbing thing about the current "green footprint" movement is the pressure put on existing shul infrastructure. People living in the wilds of W. Newton in 5500 sq ft sheet rock palaces with heating bills three times our synagoque's and driving three megasuvs try to explain, in school book Spanish, how our Kiddush preparers can recycle dirty paper plates: give me a break. This is neither responsible nor particularly respectful. As a recipent of one of the first appropiate energy technology grants issued by the U.S. government in the mid 70's, I find the current hysteria mind bogoling and read with relief this wonderful and pertinent article.
Thank You
My great-grandparents and some of their children were, along with other recent Jewish immigrants, pioneers in the Jewish agricultural community of Ellington, Connecticut outside Hartford. They arrived from Eastern Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century and worked land that had been bought with the help of the Baron Hirsch Fund. My great-grandmother was the daughter of a rabbi and my great-grandfather was a scholar, neither with any farming experience and both in late middle age. Their lives and those of their neighbors were very far from easy, but the community was considered amongst the most successful of those that these immigrant Jews had founded. At first, they grew tobacco and later, with the advent of World War Two, potatoes. In my family's case three generations farmed there. However, probably the only ones who made any money out of that hardscrabble land were the founders' descendents who finally sold their farms to developers some sixty or more years after the immigrants inaugurated their community.
Thank you Irene and others for your posts about growing up on farms. Indeed, many Jews farmed after Woodbine faded out in the 1920s. Gertrude Dubrowsky's book, the Land Was Theirs is one of the best books on the topic. Irwin Weintraub recently published a bibliography describing the large amount of literature on the subject called Jews in American Agriculture. Both can be ordered from Amazon.
I'm working on building a wiki website where American Jews can tell stories about growing up on farms or farming today. I hope to get it up and running in the next month. Look for the JewishFarmersofAmerica wikiin a month or so. It's not up yet.
My grandparents- Philip and Chana Sirisky raised cattle in Elmer New Jersey. They were part of the young Jews who came from Poland in the early 1900's. My mother, of blessed memory, was born in Alloway in 1914. There were many Jewish farmers in Salem county in those years, some of whom still remain. The names of Cutler, Bolnick, Pollack and others were very important to the times.
The despression of 1924 took its toll on many of the farms and familes and my mothers's family moved to Camden New Jersey which became a hub of Jewish cultural and religous life for many years.
Thanks for the article.
Phil Sax
Watch for my article on the Jewish Farmers in MA communities at the turn of the century. I'm researching the Jewish Agricultural movement in MA as well as the farmers who received assistance, and have interviewed descendants. The Aid Societies had good intentions but their efforts failed. Few could make a living from farming. Many knew nothing about it. Jews seem to have high education expectations of their children,- not many encourage them to become farmers.
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