Review - American Jewish Archives

Book Rwiews 21 1
kets and to cultural life in New York and Philadelphia. However,
the farmland was not good, and the close location to New York and
Philadelphia encouraged closer sponsor supervision and attracted
new settlers who did not share the Am Olam perspectives.
The chapter on sponsors is detailed, presenting much more concise
information than previously available to the general reader of
Judaica. This chapter helps set the stage for demonstrating, in the
remainder of the book, the extensive influence and control exerted
by sponsors in some colonies -including the five colonies in New
Jersey. The sponsors were mostly wealthy acculturated German
Jewish Americans who were interested in Americanization, capitalism,
and individualism. They wanted the colonists to learn English,
adopt American dress, and adopt such values as economic independence,
home ownership, and respect for private property. The
colonists shared little of this vision, so conflict was inevitable. The
sponsors also wanted to avoid the growth of unhealthy Jewish
ghettoes, which they feared would lead to anti-Semitism.They therefore
wanted to provide immediate employment for the refugees and
to counter anti-Semitic stereotypes of the unproductive Jew.
In the second half of the book, Eisenberg turns to a chronological
analysis of the Jewish agricultural and industrial colonies in Alliance,
Brotrnanville, Norma, Carmel, and Rosenhayn. She discusses
settlers and sponsors in the first years (1882-1890)~ the middle years
(1890-1910)~ and the later years (igios, 1920s~ and 1930s) characterized
by the dissolution of the colonies. Woodbine, futher to thesoutheast
in New Jersey, did not have clear connections to Am
Olam; sponsored by the Baron de Hirsch Fund, it receives brief discussion
for comparative purposes. The book really is about the five
colonies, however. Eisenberg discusses each of the colonies separately
but also interweaves the five colonies into a larger discussion
that shows how each colony was related to the others and to the
larger concept of Jewish farming.
Eisenberg makes various points that are important to a better understanding
of Jewish farming. For example, she helps debunk the
idea that colonists had no previous agricultural experience by showing
that at least significant minorities of colonists did have such previous
experience. This was especially true of settlers from the South
Pale. She suggests that "the popular notion among both historians