NEWS I Filmmaker Is Telling Jewish Farmer Story BEN GALLOB Special to The Jewish News unique chapter in Jewish history — the emergence of im- migrant Jews as major con- tributors to New Jersey's farm output — is almost at an end, largely unknown to American Jews. Even less known is the fact that New Jersey experience I - was duplicated throughout the United States, and in Canada and South America. Over nearly a century, the Baron de Hirsch Fund and the Jewish Agricultural Society helped Jews in both ► North and South America to get started at farming, accor- ding - to a professor who is devoting her life to chronicl- ing and disseminating the history and achievements of New Jersey's Jewish farmers. In 1980, Professor Gertrude Dubrovsky, who grew up on a Jewish farm, established a non-profit agency, Documen- tary III, in Princeton. It is chartered to discover, record and share the community histories of New Jersey Jewish farmers. At the peak of that ex- perience, Dubrovsky said, there were Jewish farmers in every one of the state's 22 counties. At one time there were Jewish farmers in every ▪ state. After living and working on a Jewish poultry farm in Far- mingdale, Dubrovsky left her parents' farm to marry a son of a Jewish farmer in 1946. The newly married couple I" bought a poultry farm near the farms of their parents. They operated their farm for 15 years until it became pain- fully clear, as it did eventual- ly for virtually all Jewish farmers, that it had become impossible to earn even a meager livelihood from a small farm. After the farm and her marriage failed, Dubrovsky earned aliving as a public school teacher. She earned a bachelor's degree at a Georgian Court College in Lakewood, N.J., a master's degree in English at Rutgers University in 1959 and finally a doctorate in languages and literature at Columbia University in 1974. Her doctoral dissertation was in Yiddish, a language used by virtually all the Jewish farmers. Research for her doctorate took her into the rural experience of Jews and impressed on her the urgency of the need to preserve the rapidly vanishing culture of New Jersey's Jewish farmers. That determination led her to create Documentary III. A major project of Documentary III is a one- hour documentary film, This Land is Theirs, planned for public television, schools and similar institutions. "We have 15 hours of film- ed interviews," Dubrovsky said, adding that much re- mains to be done before the film is ready for broadcast next year. , In the process, she has assembled a huge collection of archival materials. These include photographs, taped interviews and some videotaping of the ongoing ac- tivities of the cultural and social organizations of the once-active Jewish farmers. She spent two years, 1975-77, interviewing more than 120 Jewish former farmers. She learned that the first successful and long- lasting New Jersey Jewish farm industry was created in the southern New Jersey town of Vineland in 1882. Dubrovsky said this unique chapter in Jewish history began when turn-of-the- century Jewish immigrants, unhappy at the thought of toiling all their lives as pants pressers, tailors, and shoemakers in their new homeland, moved from New York to New Jersey to start poultry farms. For $5,000, obtainable from the Jewish Agriculture Socie- ty, a Jewish family could buy a five-acre farm, with a house and a chicken coop in which 2,000 chickens could be raised. It was a unique culture — farming intertwined with Jewish values — and it has largely disappeared. Those values excluded religion, which as robust socialists they scorned. Asked how many Jewish farmers were active at the peak of the Jersey experience, Dubrovsky said, "No one has really accurate figures." She added that, as the Documen- tary III brochure put it, "with every day that passes, a little more of our cultural heritage disappears." Development of the film has so far been financed by grants from the New Jersey Historical Commission, the de Hirsch Fund, a bank and private individuals. ❑ (c) 1989 Jewish Telegraphic Agency How to read a 5000 year-old language in 5 easy lessons. FRO CRASH COURSE IN READING HEBREW FIVE 1 1/2-HOUR WEEKLY CLASSES LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT NORTHWEST SUBURBAN AREA Classes Start May 29th/You'll be reading Hebrew by June 26th CALL 1-800-44-HEBREW ALEYNU — The Partnership for Jewish Adult Education in conjunction with the NATIONAL JEWISH OUTREACH PROGRAM Sponsored by: Aleynu, Machon, N.J.O.P., Young Israel of Metro Detroit, The Jewish Community Center, Center for Jewish Creativity and Exploration. 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