“Despite restrictions designed to uproot the Jew from the soil, there never was a time when Jews were not engaged in agriculture to some extent” declared Gabriel Davidson, General Manager of the Jewish Agricultural Society in an address “The Jewish Farmer In The United States” delivered at the Sixth Annual Conference of the American Country Life Association, on November 10.
“Jews have been farming almost from the very time that white men set foot on this fertile soil” Mr. Davison declared, tracing the agricultural attempts made by Jews from the time of Abraham de Lyon and Mordecai Emanuel Noah. “Today” Mr. Davidson said” there is no state in the Union that has not its Jewish farmers, and no branch of agriculture that has not its Jewish votaries.
“Within the short space of twenty years, or less, during the very period when the general drift was away from the farm and during the second half of which our foreign born farm population declined by 88,488, well nigh 15,000 Jewish families comprising 70,000 souls have returned to the soil, and a million of American’s fair acres spread over every state of the Union, representing a valuation of a hundred millions of dollars, have been made to respond to the toil and to the genius of Jewish husbandmen. If the number is still not imposing, we must keep in mind the difficulties inherent in the change from city occupation to farming and from urban to rural living in the cases of a people so long prescribed from the land.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
