Abstract
Jewish Agrarian Movements (JAM hereafter) in North America express the many different shapes and iterations of Jewish farming on the continent, grounded in historical perspectives that influence current practices and activities. From within this diversity, common threads emerge with much to contribute to agrarian social movements and scholarship. Jewish values of returning (t’shuvah), releasing (shmitah), and repairing (tikkun), along with theories of doikayt (an anti-zionist movement around “hereness”) and radical diasporism, animate JAM’s critical engagement with agri-food systems. As researchers who have both studied and participated in Jewish agrarianism in a variety of U.S. and Canadian contexts, we solidify a series of themes and tensions that emerge from JAM: diaspora and indigeneity, modernity and tradition, Jewish agroecological knowledge production, and lived religion. We argue that, while JAM has not yet been examined thoroughly within critical food scholarship, it has the potential to contribute to broader debates and frameworks within sub-fields such as radical food geographies, critical agrarianism, and decoloniality. Without consideration of JAM as a part the study of food and agriculture, there are risks of marginalization of farmers, activists and researchers of Jewish identity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Altieri, Miguel A. 2009. Agroecology, small farms, and food sovereignty. Monthly review 61. Monthly Review Press: 102. https://monthlyreview.org/2009/07/01/agroecology-small-farms-and-food-sovereignty/.
Alzate, Carolina, Frédéric Mertens, Myriam Fillion, and Aviram Rozin. 2019. The study and use of traditional knowledge in agroecological contexts. Revista de la Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias 51: 337–350. https://revistas.uncu.edu.ar/ojs3/index.php/RFCA/article/view/2455.
Bamidbar. 2006. In The Contemporary Torah, ed. David E. S. Stein. Melrose Park, PA: The Jewish Publication Society.
Bartal, Israel. 2007. Farming the land on three continents: Bilu, Am Oylom, and Yefe-Nahar. Jewish History 21: 249–261. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10835-007-9046-3.
Bell, Michael M. 2018. City of the Good: Nature, Religion, and the Ancient Search for What Is Right. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Berndtson, Rachel, and Martha Geores. 2015. “Let My People Grow.” The Jewish Farming Movement: A Bottom-Up Approach to Ecological and Social Sustainability. In The Changing World Religion Map: Sacred Places, Identities, Practices and Politics, ed. Stanley D. Brunn, 297–322. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9376-6_15.
Biale, David. 2001. Those Who Sow In Tears Shall Reap With Joy: Agriculture and Jewish Culture in Interwar Poland. Tikkun 16: 53–59. https://doi.org/10.1215/08879982-2001-1024.
Botticini, Maristella, and Zvi Eckstein. 2007. From Farmers to Merchants, Conversions and Diaspora: Human Capital and Jewish History. Journal of the European Economic Association 5: 885–926. https://doi.org/10.1162/JEEA.2007.5.5.885.
Carlisle, Liz. 2014. Critical agrarianism. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 29. Cambridge University Press: 135–145. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742170512000427.
Carney, Judith. 2013. Seeds of Memory: Botanical Legacies of the African Diaspora. In African Ethnobotany in the Americas, ed. Robert Voeks and John Rashford, 13–33. New York, NY: Springer New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0836-9_2.
Cohen, Deatra, and Adam Siegel. 2021. Ashkenazi Herbalism Rediscovering the Herbal Traditions of Eastern European Jews. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
Confeld, Lilian. 1962. Israeli Cookery. Westport: AVI Publishing Company.
Coons, Alena. 2019. Unlikely Ground: Lived Spirituality on a Jewish Urban Farm. California Institute of Integral Studies. https://www.proquest.com/openview/93660a11bcff3899241158b1ddea90ae/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y.
Deutscher, Yigal, Anna Hanau, and Nigel Savage. 2014. The Hazon Shmita Sourcebook. 2nd ed. New York: Hazon. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g2kx6MWGlzJmeffm53tzV7I1M6P-_DzI/view.
Deutscher, Yigal. 2013. Envisioning Sabbatical Culture: a Shmita manifesto. 7seeds. https://issuu.com/7seeds/docs/7seeds_manifesto.
Edwards, Brent Hayes. 2007. Diaspora. In Keywords for American Cultural Studies, ed. Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler, Third Edit. New York: NYU Press. https://keywords.nyupress.org/american-cultural-studies/essay/diaspora/.
Farming’s badly needed Blackstension agent. 2020. Dirt: Healthy Living From the Ground Up, June 1. https://www.dirt-mag.com/studs/farming-s-badly-needed-blackstension-agent-YF1171670.
Friedman, Joshua B. 2015. Yiddish Returns: Language, Intergenerational Gifts, and Jewish Devotion. University of Michigan. https://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/113588.
Goldberg, Zachary A, and Anika M Rice. 2022. What is a Jewish Seed? Conversations with growers of the hairy melon. Jewish Seed Project Blog. https://www.jewishfarmernetwork.org/post/what-is-a-jewish-seed-conversations-with-growers-of-the-hairy-melon.
Gould, Rebecca Kneale. 1997. Getting (not too) close to nature: Modern homesteading as lived religion in America. In Lived Religion in America, ed. David D. Hall, 217–242. Toward a History of Practice. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv143mdcw.13.
Grey, Sam, and Raj Patel. 2015. Food sovereignty as decolonization: Some contributions from Indigenous movements to food system and development politics. Agriculture and Human Values 32: 431–444. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-014-9548-9.
Haber, Joel. 2020. The Surprising Jewish History of Mushroom Barley Soup. The Nosher, November 30. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/the-nosher/the-surprising-jewish-history-of-mushroom-barley-soup/.
Hall, David D., ed. 1997. Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv143mdcw.
Harris, Ben. 2020. Jewish farms are booming. Now the farmers want to grow their community. Jewish Telegraphic Agency. https://www.jta.org/2020/02/26/united-states/jewish-farms-are-booming-now-the-farmers-want-to-grow-their-community.
Hazon. 2021. Ensuring Indigenous Rights. New York: Hazon: The Jewish Lab for Sustainability. https://anchor.fm/hazon/episodes/Ensuring-Indigenous-Rights-e12t2po/a-a57mk5p.
Herscher, Uri D. 1981. Jewish Agricultural Utopias in America, 1880–1910. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Hillel, Daniel. 2005. The natural history of the Bible: An environmental exploration of the Hebrew scriptures. New York: Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/08879982-2001-1024.
Hoffelmeyer, Michaela. 2021. “Out” on the Farm: Queer Farmers Maneuvering Heterosexism and Visibility*. Rural Sociology 86. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: 752–776. https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12378.
Janick, Jules, Harry S. Paris, and David C. Parrish. 2007. The Cucurbits of Mediterranean Antiquity: Identification of Taxa from Ancient Images and Descriptions. Annals of Botany 100: 1441–1457. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcm242.
Jewish Farm School. n.d. Shtetl Skills: Workshops for Promoting Practical, Ancestral, Sustainable Skills Rooted in Jewish Traditions, Land Connection, and Food Justice. Jewish Farm School Curriculum.
Katz, Emily Alice. 2015. Bringing Zion Home: Israel in American Jewish Culture, 1948–1967. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Kaye/Kantrowitz, Melanie. 2007. The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Keeve, Christian Brooks. 2020. Keeping Seeds: Memory, Materiality and Agrobiodiversity Conservation. University of Wisconsin - Madison. http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/81098%0A.
Kim, Hyejin. 2022. South and/or north: An indigenous seed movement in South Korea and the multiple bases of food sovereignty. Agriculture and Human Values 39: 521–533. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-021-10263-5.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1995. Introduction. In Life is with People: The Culture of the Shtetl, ed. Mark Zborowksi and Elizabeth Herzog. New York: Schocken.
Kook, Rabbi Abraham Isaac. 2014. Rav Kook’s Introduction to Shabbat Ha’Aretz. New York: Hazon.
Krantz, David. 2016. Shmita Revolution: The Reclamation and Reinvention of the Sabbatical Year. Religions. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7080100.
Krone, Adrienne. 2015. “A Shmita Manifesto”: a radical sabbatical approach to Jewish food reform in the United States. Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 26: 303–25. https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67459.
Krone, Adrienne. 2021. Farming on the Front Lines: Jewish Environmentalisms and Kinship in the Chthulucene. Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 26. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill: 148–161. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685357-20220203.
Leman, Juda. 1935. The land of promise. Urim Film Company. https://jfc.org.il/en/movie/54747-2/.
LeVasseur, Todd. 2017. Religious agrarianism and the return of place: From values to practice in sustainable agriculture. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Linke Fligl. 5781. 2020. Introduction to Ushpi(zine). Ki Li Ha’aretz 1: 3. https://linkefligl.com/ushpizine.
Linke Fligl. n.d. Linke Fligl: Our Story. https://linkefligl.com/our-story.
Liphshiz, Cnaan, and Iris Tzur. 2013. How culpable were Dutch Jews in the slave trade? Jewish Telegraphic Agency, December 26. https://www.jta.org/2013/12/26/global/dutch-rabbi-confronts-jews-with-ancestors-complicity-in-slavery.
Mares, Teresa M. 2019. Life on the Other Border: Farmworkers and Food Justice in Vermont. Oakland: University of California Press.
Martens, Tabitha, Jaime Cidro, Michael Anthony Hart, and Stéphane McLachlan. 2016. Understanding Indigenous food sovereignty through an Indigenous research paradigm. Journal of Indigenous Social Development 5: 18–37. https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jisd/article/view/58469.
McDonald, Noah. 2021. Growing the Legacy: Stewarding a Black Agrarian Revival in the Rural South. Atlanta. https://issuu.com/saafon/docs/saafon_black_land_tenure_project-final.
Milstein, Cindy. 2021. Prologue: Shadows and Moonlight. In There is nothing so whole as a broken heart, ed. Cindy Milstein. Chico and Edinburgh: AK Press.
Minkoff-Zern, Laura-Anne. 2019. The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Most, Andrea. 2016. The Contemporary Jewish Food Movement in North America: A Report from the Field(s). In Jews and Their Foodways, ed. Anat Helman. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190265427.003.0012.
Near, Henry. 2007. The Kibbutz Movement: A History. Vol 1: Origins and Growth 1909–1939. Portland: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization.
Ofori-Solomon, Isaac. 2020. Ashkenormativity Is a Threat to All Jewish Communities. Hey Alma, June 17. https://www.heyalma.com/ashkenormativity-is-a-threat-to-all-jewish-communities/.
Paris, Harry S, and Jules Janick. 2008. Reflections on linguistics as an aid to taxonomical identification of ancient Mediterranean cucurbits: the Piqqus of the Faqqous. In IXth EUCARPIA meeting on genetics and breeding of Cucurbitaceae, ed. Michel Pitrat, 43–52. Avignon (France).
Paynter, Kevon. 2018. Black Farmers Reviving Their African Roots: “We Are Feeding Our Liberation.” YES!, March 2. https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/decolonize/2018/03/02/black-farmers-reviving-their-african-roots-we-are-feeding-our-liberation.
Penniman, Leah. 2018. Farming while black: Soul fire farm’s practical guide to liberation on the land. White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing.
Pinchuk, Ben Cion. 2001. Jewish discourse and the Shtetl. Jewish History 15: 169–179. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011088724736.
Piterberg, Gabriel. 2013. The Zionist Colonization of Palestine in the Context of Comparative Settler Colonialism. In Palestine and the Palestinians in the 21st Century, ed. Rochelle Davis and Mimi Kirk. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Randall, Daniel. 2021. Confronting antisemitism on the left: Arguments for socialists. London: Whitefox Publishing Ltd.
Reese, Ashanté M. 2019. Black food geographies: Race, self-reliance, and food access in Washington, DC. Chapel Hill: UNC Press.
Reese, Ashanté M, and Dara Cooper. 2021. Making Spaces Something Like Freedom: Black Feminist Praxis In The Re/Imagining Of A Just Food System. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 20: 450–59. https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/2024.
Reynolds, Kristin, Daniel R Block, Colleen Hammelman, Brittany D Jones, Jessica L Gilbert, and Henry Herrera. 2020. Envisioning radical food geographies: shared learning and praxis through the Food Justice Scholar-Activist/Activist-Scholar Community of Practice. Human Geography 13. SAGE Publications: 277–292. https://doi.org/10.1177/1942778620951934.
Rice, Anika M, and Zachary A Goldberg. 2021b. How Jewish Farmers are Divesting from White Supremacy. Edge Effects, July 1. https://edgeeffects.net/jewish-farmers/.
Rice, Anika, and Zachary Goldberg. 2021a. Harvesting a participatory movement’: Initial participatory action research with the Jewish Farmer Network. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development 11: 1–22. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2021.111.010.
Riordan, Kevin. 2023. Two Philly chefs and a South Jersey farmer are teaming up to bring fresh produce to a Jewish community center. The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 21. https://www.inquirer.com/business/bartee-produce-nj-honeysuckle-provisions-philadelphia-community-supported-agriculture-20230121.html.
Rosenbaum, Judith, and Lori Shaller. The Immigrant Experience in NYC, 1880–1920. Jewish Women’s Archive. https://jwa.org/article/immigrant-experience-in-nyc-1880-1920.
Rosenfeld, Arno. 2020. Pushing 80, Mike Tabor Is Still Pushing Himself and the Cause of Jewish Farming. Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, May 19. https://www.jewishexponent.com/2020/05/19/pushing-80-mike-tabor-is-still-pushing-himself-and-the-cause-of-jewish-farming/.
Sachs, Carolyn E., Mary E. Barbercheck, Kathryn Brasier, Nancy Ellen Kiernan, and Anna Rachel Terman. 2016. The Rise of Women Farmers and Sustainable Agriculture. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Sbicca, Joshua. 2012. Growing food justice by planting an anti-oppression foundation: Opportunities and obstacles for a budding social movement. Agriculture and Human Values 29: 455–466. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-012-9363-0.
Sefaria Community Translation. n.d. Retrieved from https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.1.1?ven=Sefaria_Community_Translation&lang=bi&with=Translations&lang2=en.
Shandler, Jeffrey. 2008. Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture. Oakland: University of California Press.
Silvern, Steven E. 2021. The Jewish Food Movement: A Sustainable and Just Vision for Place, Identity, and Environment. In Religion, Sustainability, and Place: Moral Geographies of the Anthropocene, ed. Steven E. Silvern and Edward H. Davis, 327–354. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_14.
Stein, D. E., Berlin, A., Frankel, E., & Meyers, C. L. 2006. The Contemporary Torah: A Gender-Sensitive Adaptation of the JPS Translation, ed. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
TallBear, Kim. 2013. Genomic articulations of indigeneity. Social Studies of Science 43. SAGE Publications Ltd: 509–533. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312713483893.
Toledo, Víctor M. 2022. Agroecology and spirituality: reflections about an unrecognized link. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems 46. Taylor & Francis: 626–641. https://doi.org/10.1080/21683565.2022.2027842.
Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. 2012. Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 1: 1–40. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630.
Vernik, Masha. 2021. Our Story Begins with our Ancestors. Jewish Seed Project Blog, April. https://www.jewishfarmernetwork.org/post/our-story-begins-with-our-ancestors.
Waskow, Arthur. 1987. Godwrestling. New York: Schocken.
Wodziński, Marcin. 2007. Clerks, Jews, and farmers: Projects of Jewish agricultural settlement in Poland. Jewish History 21: 279–303. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10835-007-9039-2.
Wolfe, Patrick. 2006. Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research 8. Routledge: 387–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240.
Wypler, Jaclyn. 2019. Lesbian and Queer Sustainable Farmer Networks in the Midwest. Society & Natural Resources 32. Routledge: 947–964. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2019.1584834.
Yoskowitz, Jeffrey, and Liz Alpern. 2016. The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods. New York: Flatiron Books.
Zalkin, Mordechai. 2013. Can Jews Become Farmers? Rurality, Peasantry and Cultural Identity in the World of the Rural Jew in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Europe. Rural History 24. Cambridge University Press: 161–175. https://doi.org/10.1017/S095679331300006X.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors have no competing interests to declare.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendix 1 Select North American Jewish Farming Organizations
Appendix 1 Select North American Jewish Farming Organizations
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Goldberg, Z.A., Norman, M.W., Croog, R. et al. Return and repair: the rise of Jewish agrarian movements in North America. Agric Hum Values (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-024-10543-w
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-024-10543-w