Der Yidisher Farmer - The Jewish Farmer: A Monthly Periodical for Agricultural Colonists. Edited by Herman Rosenthal.

<<A scarce complete run of this short-lived Yiddish journal for Jewish agriculturalists newly arrived in America.>> The violently increased levels of anti-Semitism in Russia during the 1880’s resulted in mass Jewish immigration to America. The Jews in America at the time were somewhat overwhelmed by the need to care for these new immigrants while simultaneously somewhat looked down upon them as an inferior class. The solution was to set up agricultural colonies to enable the immigrants to support themselves. The thinking being that farm colonies would hasten the Americanization process of the new immigrants. Many colonies were set up during the 1880s, but most did not last into the 1890s. The instigator of this periodical “Der Yidisher Farmer” was Russian-born Herman Rosenthal (1843-1917) who came to America in 1881 and founded the first agricultural colony for Russian Jews on Sicily Island, Louisiana. This colony did not survive very long and Rosenthal moved on to help organize the Cremieux colony in South Dakota. Rosenthal later became a prominent administrator in the Woodbine, NJ colony which was founded with the aid of the newly established Baron de Hirsch fund in 1891. By 1898 he left farm-life and was appointed chief of the Slavonic division of the New York Public Library. Numbers 3-12 of “Der Yidisher Farmer” contains the serialization of the novel “Meir Ezofowicz” by the Polish Nobel prize-winner Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841-1910). This Yiddish translation centering on a family’s conflict between traditional Judaism and modern liberalism is the first appearance of Meir Ezofowicz in America. Three articles by the Russian-American Yiddish playwright Jacob Gordin (1853-1909) also appear here, in which he urges Jews to abandon the wheeling and dealing of city-life and join agricultural colonies. Uri D. Herscher describes the utopian dreams of immigrants who came to America in the 1880s with hopes to cultivate the land instead of living in the city. He writes “the experience of these dreamers is reflected in Herman Rosenthal’s Yiddish-language journal, The Jewish Farmer” (see Jewish Agricultural Utopias in America, 1880-1910 p. 123). See also Jacob Rader, United States Jewry 1776-1985, pp. 16-49.