Jewish Agricultural Utopias in America 1880-1910

<p>Brook Farm Oneida Amana and Nauvoo are familiar names in American history. Far less familiar are New Odessa Bethlehem-Jehudah Cotopaxi and Alliance—the Brook Farms and Oneidas of the Jewish people in North America.<br /><br />The wealthy westernized leaders of late nineteenth-century American Jewry and a member of the immigrating Russian Jews shared an eagerness to "repeal" the lengthy socioeconomic history in which European Jews were confined to petty commerce and denied agricultural experience. A small group of immigrant Jews chose to ignore urbanization and industrialization defy the depression afflicting agriculture in the late 1800s and devote themselves to experiments in collective farming in America.</p>