Pushing 80, Mike Tabor
Is Still Pushing Himself and
the Cause of Jewish Farming
BY ARNO ROSENFELD
Kamada Kaori / iStock / Getty Images Plus
O n the wrinkled sheet of paper, a black-and-white Mike
Tabor looks away from the camera with a grimace.

Th rough the graininess of the tiny photograph you can
make out his full beard and shock of white hair jutting out from
under a baseball cap. Th e photo accompanies a dense block
of text that starts: “Michael Tabor — Tireless activist, organic
farmer, justice-seeker, husband, father. Th e ultimate pot-stirrer.

A non-conformist.”
But unlike most obituaries, this one is written in the present
tense. And Tabor is seated at his dining table, looking at the piece
of paper.

Last winter, Tabor went to the doctor with back aches. Routine
tests fl agged an irregular heartbeat and Tabor was hospitalized.

He quickly underwent surgery to replace a damaged heart valve,
a procedure that requires “turning off ” the heart for several
minutes. Tabor didn’t know if he would live.

At some point during the eight-hour surgery, Tabor said that
he perceived a conversation in which God asked what he’d done
with his life to make his children proud and to make the world
a better place.

Th ough the recovery has been long, Tabor, is back to holding
court in his Maryland home and overseeing the vegetable harvest
at Licking Creek Bend Farm in southern Pennsylvania. In many
ways, it’s business as usual for the 79-year-old Tabor, who has
split his time between the farm and home since the 1970s.

But the brush with death spurred Tabor to start putting his
life down in writing, attempting to answer the question posed to
him during the surgery: What has he done with his life?
See Farming, Page 24
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM THE GOOD LIFE
Photo by David Stuck
MAY 14, 2020
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