Jewish Farms 1

Jewish Farms 1

Innovations in Jewish Life Collections

2023

Gregg Drinkwater, Hilary Kalisman, Samira Mehta, Maggie Rosenau

This item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Portable Document Format

English

While American Jews disproportionately live in urban areas, the United States has a rich history of Jewish farmers. The first wave of Jewish farming in the U.S. began as utopian farming communities in the late 19th century, including a community here in Colorado at Cotopaxi, which failed after just two years. In the early 20th century, Jews involved in agriculture increased from roughly 5,000 Jewish farming families in 1911 to double that by 1925. In the middle of the century, many of these Jewish farmers shifted to other occupations.

But in the 1970s and 1980s, cohorts of young middle-class Jews, many who grew up in post-World War II suburbs, began establishing organic and sustainable Jewish farms in regions across the country as part of a “back-to-the-land” movement, with mixed success (one example of a very successful venture is Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, which grew out of the turn to small-scale organic farming by founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield).

recently, a wave of Jewish environmental activists and others interested in connecting their Judaism to lifestyles more attuned to the natural rhythms of nature and to traditional and artisanal foodways have turned to Jewish farms – many very small scale.

Some are self-sustaining working farms, but many of this newer wave of Jewish farms are nonprofits dedicated to engaging community members through education, community building activities, and programs linking the environment and Jewish values. A few function as retreat centers with food production part of a broader range of activities, such as meditation retreats. Two such small nonprofit farms here in Colorado include the Milk & Honey farm at the Boulder Jewish Community Center and the Ekar farm in Denver.