Farming
Continued from Page 25
but eschews the organic label, and accepts food stamps and even
the occasional barter.

In recent years, Tabor has taken on a mentoring role for
younger Jewish farmers. He said he deepened his relationship
with Judaism through closeness to the land.

“As we became more and more involved in farming, I
realized there were overlays with the holidays,” he said. “We
were a nomadic people, and then became a pastoral people, and
so Pesach is the barley harvest and then 49 days later Shavuot is
the wheat harvest.”
But even with a slight uptick in the number of young Jews
getting into farming, American Jews remain a decidedly urban
people. Tabor recognized early on that he was largely on his own
at the farm.

“Right from the beginning, it was very difficult being in a
rural Protestant area,” Tabor said. “You learn the taboos of rural
culture: You don’t talk politics and you don’t talk religion, so it
was very difficult to talk about the things I believed in.”
The isolation got him interested in the success of Jewish
peddlers, who used to frequent rural areas like the one where his
farm is located.

“A peddler’s purpose was to have a 50 mile circuit, get back
by Shabbos so he could be with other Jews who spoke Yiddish,
save money and bring his family over,” Tabor said. “There’s
something very noble about that to me. That’s very appealing.”
As part of the writing project he began after his heart surgery,
Tabor has been researching the history of peddlers in his county
and nearby areas.

Tabor believes the story of these peddlers, who may have
traversed some of the same roads he uses, is being lost to history.

Peddling, he said, offered new immigrants a path to economic
stability — spend a few years on the road before opening a store
of one’s own — while exposing rural Americans to a variety of
goods they otherwise wouldn’t have had access too, especially
in the case of women and African Americans often shut out of
traditional retail consumerism.

“It’s a remarkable history of Jew and non-Jew getting benefit
from each other in a positive way,” Tabor said.

Tabor is on the farm most months of the year and attending
conferences and traveling for his book research during the off
season. And if he has any second thoughts about having worked
a life of manual labor interspersed with political agitation, well
past the age that most of his peers have retired, he doesn’t show it.

“Had I gone through the normal path of taking a job and
then in my 50s retiring and, I don’t know, being in Florida, what
would I do? I just can’t conceive of that,” he said. “It’s a good way
to die early.” l
Arno Rosenfeld is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C. A longer
version of this article first appeared in Washington Jewish Week, an
Exponent-affiliated publication.

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JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



6 Memoirs
That Explore the
Mother-Daughter Bond
BY BABETTE DUNKELGRÜN
I n Season 2 of the Hulu comedy “Shrill,” based on the book by Lindy West, there’s
a restaurant scene in which the central character’s mom closely monitors her
daughter’s food intake. It’s clear the tendency is familiar — even in their
relationship as adults, the mother discloses her almost political stance against dessert
and bread baskets.

Aft er the episode, I messaged my friends to see if their tension spoke to them, too.

What had been so recognizable?
One friend related to the dinner scene, saying, “My mother said the word ‘fat’ like it
was dirty porn.”
Another commented, “Mine marched me into Weight Watchers the day before
Th anksgiving.”
Illustration: Malte Mueller/Getty Images via JTA.org
See Bond, Page 28
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM THE GOOD LIFE
MAY 14, 2020
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