The image of the Jew solely as urbanite may stem from the period
of 1880 to 1920, when two million Jews left their homes in Eastern
Europe and established themselves in the urban centers of America.
Lesser known are the agrarian efforts of Jewish immigrants. In
"Back to the Soil," Robert Goldberg focuses on the attempt of one
such Jewish colony in Clarion, Utah. In 1911, eighty-one families
left eastern cities to farm the Clarion tract. Jewish families
funded the venture, the governor of Utah en-couraged it, and the
Mormon Church financially aided the community. Despite these
efforts, Clarion died as an organizational entity in 1916, with the
dozen remaining families departing by the mid-1920s.
Goldberg sheds light on the values and ideals of the colonists,
the daily rhythm of life, the personalities of the settlers, and
the struggle for and eventual collapse of their dream. Of all the
attempts to establish a Jewish colony on the land, Clarion was the
largest and had the longest existence of any colony west of the
Appalachians. The Clarion fragment, lost and forgotten, thus
becomes a crucial part of the larger mosaic of Jewish history in
the West.
Release of this new paperback edition is timed to coincide with
the celebration of the centennial of the founding of the Clarion
colony.
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