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The Land Was Theirs: Jewish Farmers in the Garden State
Provides a perspective on the pressures, problems, and satisfactions of rural Jewish life as experienced in one community
The Land Was Theirs is about Farmingdale, New Jersey, a community of Jewish farming communities in the United States established with the help of the Jewish Agricultural Society. The 50 year history of Farmingdale provides a perspective on the pressures, problems, and satisfactions of rural Jewish life as experienced in one community.
Beginning in 1919, the community grew around the small town of Farmingdale, when two Jewish families pooled their resources to establish a farm. The community evolved gradually as unrelated individuals with no previous farm experience settled and then created the institutions and organizations they needed to sustain their Jewish life. By 1945 Farmingdale was one of the leading egg-producing communities in the United States, and contributed in large measure to New Jersey’s reputation as the “egg basket of America.”
The Land Was Theirs draws from life-history interviews with 120 farmers, from the author’s personal experiences, and from a variety of private and community papers and documents. They are the pieces from which a full picture of a single Jewish farm community emerges.
The Land Was Theirs is about Farmingdale, New Jersey, a community of Jewish farming communities in the United States established with the help of the Jewish Agricultural Society. The 50 year history of Farmingdale provides a perspective on the pressures, problems, and satisfactions of rural Jewish life as experienced in one community.
Beginning in 1919, the community grew around the small town of Farmingdale, when two Jewish families pooled their resources to establish a farm. The community evolved gradually as unrelated individuals with no previous farm experience settled and then created the institutions and organizations they needed to sustain their Jewish life. By 1945 Farmingdale was one of the leading egg-producing communities in the United States, and contributed in large measure to New Jersey’s reputation as the “egg basket of America.”
The Land Was Theirs draws from life-history interviews with 120 farmers, from the author’s personal experiences, and from a variety of private and community papers and documents. They are the pieces from which a full picture of a single Jewish farm community emerges.
- GenresNonfiction
272 pages, Paperback
First published February 28, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 16, 2019
Gertrude Dubrowsky has written a very comprehensive and touching book about the Jewish Chicken Farmers of Farmingdale, New Jersey. Not only do we get very factual information about why they started coming to New Jersey in 1919, how heir children were schooled in the a gentile township, how they built and attended a Jewish Center and how hey learned and maintained their poultry farming, we learn about their great intellectual curiosity. Also we get a sense of what kind of person and during what era, a group of people would want to leave an urban setting to farm.
October 7, 2019
A fascinating telling of the story of Jewish egg farmers in New Jersey in the early part of the twentieth century.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews