Jane Therese for The New York Times
Posted on 06/22/2005 5:18:21 AM PDT by Pharmboy
Jane Therese for The New York Times
Lillian Greenblatt Braun in the Alliance Colony cemetery.
PITTSGROVE, N.J. - Lillian Greenblatt Braun's 100th birthday party-cum-homecoming began, appropriately enough, with a trip to the graveyard.
Leaning on a niece's arm in the bright sunshine on a recent Sunday, Mrs. Braun walked along the tombstones in the cemetery of the old Jewish agricultural colony of Alliance, deep in southern New Jersey.
"That's my mother," she said, pausing at a stone inscribed in English and Hebrew. "Here's Uncle Benny." The next plot was a blank patch of grass. "Yes, and I'm here."
The niece, Merle Greenblatt Zucker, caught Mrs. Braun's hand. "But you're not here," she said. "You can't go. You're our only connection."
She is indeed. Mrs. Braun, a petite, indomitable woman with wide blue eyes, appears to be the lone surviving native of the Alliance Colony, making her a vital link to an important but largely buried part of American Jewish history.
In the 1880's, pogroms and anti-Semitic laws in Russia caused a historic exodus of Jews. Most ended up crowded into tenements in American cities. But some Jewish thinkers urged their brethren, as one of them wrote, "to become tillers of the soil and thus shake off the accusation that we were petty mercenaries living upon the toil of others." And so hundreds of Jews established agricultural colonies on land bought for them by charities and philanthropists.
The odds were against them. Often the land was unyielding. The settlers, mostly tradesman or scholars, were ill prepared for a life of clearing tree stumps and birthing calves. (snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
For one hundred years old, she looks pretty good (I hope Bill Clinto doesn't see this picture).
I went to school in NYC with a Jewish kid who grew up on a farm in Vineland, NJ, but his parents came here from Poland in the late 1930s rather than during the 19th Century.
A wise man. That was, and still is to some degree, the Jewish stereotype. I had never heard of a Jewish farmer until this.
My uncle's mother passed away a few months ago at the age of 100 1/2.
Jewish farmers and black hockey-players... now those are REAL minorities.
Yeah, she's 3800 years younger than his last object of desire.
As the testimonials rolled on, two of Mrs. Braun's 22 great-grandchildren wriggled in a chair next to her. She raised her eyebrows. "I'm going to smack you," she whispered, pointing a crooked finger. The boys stopped squirming. Mrs. Braun beamed.
LOL! Too true, too true...
My grandfather grew up on a farm in northern Alberta in the 1920s and my grandmother's family lived for a time on a farm in Manitoba. There were a lot more Jewish farmers in Canada then America. It's because the Canadian government forced many Jewish immigrants (and other immigrants) to live in small rural northern communities, especially in Manitoba and Alberta (and for a very short time Cape Breton), to try to settle the north. The plan in general was a huge failure, but you've got a couple small communities of farmers in parts of rural Canada which were, or still are, entirely Jewish.
Great article. Just printed it out to show my dad and some other alte kockers
Didn't the Bronfman family start their liquor business in Alberta? Perhaps Saskatchewan?
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Sam Bronfman was one of eight children of Mindel and Ekiel Bronfmam (born in Soroki, Bessarabia). His parents immigrated to Wapella, Saskatchewan in 1889, but soon moved to Brandon, Manitoba. In 1903, the family bought a small hotel business, and Samuel, noting that much of the profit was in alcoholic beverages. As a result, he established the Distillers Corporation in 1924 in Montreal.
So good call. They apparenty were from Saskathewan and Manitoba. At least, that's where the kids (including Sam) grew up.
"A wise man. That was, and still is to some degree, the Jewish stereotype. I had never heard of a Jewish farmer until this."
There were many Jewish farmers in Eastern Europe, for example my paternal grandfathers side who emigrated from the Bukowina district in the Carpathian Mountain foothills. There were many others through what is now Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Beylorussia, Russia, etc.
I know some older Jews whose families had farms in the Catskills. The original Woodstock took place on Max Yasgur's upstate farm and Yasgur was Jewish
I thought this was a singles ad...
Yeah, he's never heard of Tevyeh?
Incidentally, one of the big reasons there were so few Jewish farmers was of course the fact that there were not allowed to own land in the old country. That'll put a hitch in the development of agrarian skills.
but they weren't really farmers, the common word was "peasants"
"Incidentally, one of the big reasons there were so few Jewish farmers was of course the fact that there were not allowed to own land in the old country."
They tended to be landless farmers, serfs who leased the land they farmed.
Jewish farmers and black hockey-players... now those are REAL minorities.
You're both forgetting your Jewish history. Biblical Israel was highly agricultural and a great deal of Halakhah deals with agricultural matters, tithes, sacrifices,offerings, etc. These laws are still studied in minute detail by even the most urban Orthodox Jews.
Of course, the strange fact is that this aspect of Judaism is not looked upon as "Jewish" but as simply part of our common religious heritage. It's this de-Judaification of the Bible and de-Biblicization of the Jews that lies at the heart of much of our modern dilemma.
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