Jewish Chicken Ranchers of
posted
to www.marxmail.org on
Last night the City of
Information on this ongoing series is at: http://www.cuny.tv/series/jewish350/index.lasso
The documentary focused on an aspect of Jewish life that
I've written about here in the past, namely the effort to get back to the land as
farmers in an effort to mitigate the "Jewish problem." In the 19th
century Jewish concentration in urban areas as shopkeepers and light
manufacturing workers was seen as an obstacle to further development as a
people. Colonies were set up around the
The Jewish farming initiatives in my own county in upstate NY are documented in "Jewish Farmers of the Catskills: A Century of Survival" by Abraham D. Lavender, and Clarence B. Steinberg. I heard Steinberg speak at a conference on the Catskills several years ago. I reported then:
On Sunday afternoon, I
heard a truly fascinating presentation on Jewish farmers in
Steinberg presented a
Marxist analysis of Jewish farming in the area. He explained that Jews came to
The agrarian socialism
of these settlers was very much influenced by the Utopian experiments of the
19th century. When the 20th century arrived, the farmers retained their
left-wing culture but began to identify with the cooperative movement of the
German Social Democracy instead. When they couldn't get fire insurance from
anti-Semitic insurance companies, they started their own cooperative fire
insurance company. When they needed cheap grain to feed their poultry, they
started a cooperative feed-mill that bought grain directly from the National
Farmers
In
Bonnie Burt and Judith Montell's
documentary consists of interviews with surviving members of the community,
plus archival photos. Although it is a modest film, it succeeds in bringing to
life a fascinating aspect of Jewish life in the
Most of the Jews in
This community exemplified the point made by Paul Buhle in "From the Lower East Side to Hollywood," namely that "Yiddishkayt" or "Jewishness" has less to do with religion than it does with values and culture.
One of the
Eventually, the town divided between leftist and rightist
Jews during the pressures of the witch-hunt. Not surprisingly, a Jewish
holocaust survivor from
One of the most endearing characters in this altogether
endearing documentary is folksinger Scott Gerber, a descendant of a
A CD of his songs titled "Songs of a Jewish Cowboy" is available from the director Bonnie Burt at: http://www.bonnieburt.com/. Bonnie's affinities should be obvious from this website. Other projects include a 15 minute film titled "Trip to Jewish Cuba."
A website dedicated to "Jewish Chicken Ranchers in
Sidney Roger: Some of the Jewish people from my neighborhood
left
Interviewer: Really?
Roger: Up until a very few years ago. They sold chickens and eggs and chicken feed. Some of them became very successful. Many of them gave a lot of money to "the Party," as they called it.
Interviewer: Now one question I want to ask quickly before we move on. The party in this case would be the American Communist party?
I suppose it would be. Remember, to begin with there was no
Communist party in
Why
Then they were destroyed pretty much by new methods of raising chickens and trucking them into the market frozen. That's another story. I've digressed, but I knew these people; I was raised among them in Boyle Heights and I'd like to talk a little bit about my relationship with them because it's a very important story of the times.
===
Sidney Roger: But all this time, I'm also being politicized. My mother, for example. For you, it was almost like it was a political statement that she was willing to risk doing abortions. Obviously, I never thought of it in those terms. Now I agree. It was a statement. That she was willing to do this because it served some social purpose. Today, it really has special meaning.
Still, talking about politicizing, she was very close to a group of women who were self-styled revolutionary poetesses. All writing poetry, mostly in Yiddish, some in Russian. She also wrote some poetry.
She was very close to them. I can come back to that later if you wish. I think she thought of her life as being kind of poetical, rather than being part of a rigid doctrinaire situations where you follow someone's line.
My father, I think, was much more rigidly doctrinaire. But my mother was socially-politicized, you might say. For example, when my mother spoke about my father, she would never say "my husband." She would always say "my friend." She refused to belong to anybody. Most among these women poets, were people who worked at many jobs. One was a pharmacist. I remember, she referred to her husband, Louis, as "my friend" instead of "my husband."
Much of the poetry they read to each other were strong diatribes against man's domination over women. I want my friend to treat me as his equal, is the idea. I used to listen to them reading with trembling emotion. I'd be in back of the office. They'd be reading in the waiting room. I'd be in the other room listening to them reading in Yiddish.
full: http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt1000013q/?search=petaluma