Review - American Jewish Archives

210 American Jewish Archives
portionately affects certain regions, ethnic groups, occupational
sectors, and economic classes within the home country"(xix).
Using empirical analyses, Eisenberg asserts that migrants from
the South Pale were overrepresented among the early agricultural
colonists and that they differed ideologically and demographically
from later migrants. Jewish immigrants from the South Pale had been
more integrated into secular society and less religiously traditional
than Jewish immigrants from other regions of eastern Europe. They
were also comparatively more concentrated in the commercial sector
and in agricultural and agriculture-related occupations. After docu-
menting these differences, Eisenberg argues, persuasively in my opin-
ion, that differences in these premigration conditions are important
for understanding the shift from farming to mixed farming industry
and the shift from communal ownership to private ownership.
Another important, and perhaps controversial, point made by
the author is a challenging of the heavy emphasis usually put on
pogroms to explain migration. She suggests that "the focus on per-
secutions and on the mass nature of the movement tends to blur the
economic, geographic, and demographic factors that were equally,
if not more, importantn(4). This is a minority perspective but one
that seems to be supported by the author's data. Whether or not one
agrees with Eisenberg on this point, hopefully the attention to pre-
migration factors will become more important in the larger study of
Jewish migration.
Between 1881 and 1884, about twenty-four Jewish agricultural so-
cieties were established in the United States, about all through Am
Olam or at least with the involvement of some Am Olam members.
Because of its involvement, the Am Olam has been discussed previ-
ously in a number of sources. Eisenberg's thirty-six page chapter on
the Am Olam, however, is one of the best discussions so far because
of its attention to social class, occupation, and religious and other
demographic differences among Jewish groups, as we1 as with
non-Jews, in eastern Europe. Eisenberg briefly discusses some of
the other twenty-four Am Olam connected colonies but notes that -
with the exception of the five in southern New Jersey-all were ex-
tremely short- lived and not well documented. The New Jersey
colonies were different in that they were in a relatively temperate
climate and that they were conveniently located close both to mar-