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Comrades and Chicken Ranchers: The Story of a California Jewish Community
Given its tumultuous history, one would hardly have expected Petaluma, California, to become transformed into the San Francisco bedroom suburb that it is today. It had been a small-town agricultural community, where Jewish chicken ranchers and radicals enjoyed a vigorous Yiddish cultural life, maintained intense political commitments, and took part in sharp conflicts among themselves and with the society beyond. In this unique work of oral history, Kenneth Kann has ingeniously arranged and edited interviews with more than two hundred people, some of them telling their life stories in their own Yiddishized English. We meet an array of striking characters and families of three generations—East European immigrant settlers, their children, and their grandchildren. The narrative begins with the immigrant generation's flight from the Old World and traces the immigrants' long, uneasy adjustment to life in America. It describes the dilemma of the members of the second generation, who find themselves torn between the ways of their parents and the gentile world around them. The book concludes with accounts of the third generation, who feel distant from their grandparents but who struggle to recover lost ethnic roots and are uncertain how to raise their children. In this compelling chorus of voices, we find a Jewish Communist who describes being tarred and feathered in the 1930s and his grandson, recalling his own encounters, during the anti-war movement of the 1960s, with the grandchildren of the vigilantes who carried out the earlier assault. An immigrant proudly explains why she taught her children Yiddish, and a grandchild scolds his parents because they did not. One young woman finds the Jewish community too gossipy and confining; another is warmed by its closeness. The cast is vibrant, their words both touching and often hilarious. Comrades and Chicken Ranchers is a delight.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 13, 2020
Some of my family are in this!
July 2, 2009
This book shed so much light on American Jewish history. Below I've listed amazing Quotes from the book, which is mostly a collection of oral narratives:
p. 39
Ben Hochman
I spent my three years in Siberia. It was the northern part, hundreds of miles away from a railfroad. They took us by sled. No escape. The government paid the political prisoners six and a half rubles a month to work for the farmers there. I didn"t care so muhc for the money, but I wanted to work. I had an urget o show them that Jews can do it. We were forbidden from farmingin Russia, and then they turned the peasants against: "The Jews life off you." But I was raised on the Bible--we were an agricultural people in ancient times. I always wanted to do agricultural work. IN Siberia I plowed the ground, I cut hay with a scthe, I chopped wood. I was a political prisoner, but there you could be a free man. The land was free, the forests were free. you could build, you could hunt, you could fish. Everything was free.
p. 49
Hymie Golden
Anything you do, you gotta have a feeling you like it. Then you succeed. The most Jewish people in Petaluma, they didn't come here to get rich. You can't get rich from the chickens cause you're always gonna hit a bum makret one day.
The Jewish people in here, they came to have a better life. In the city, you gotta pinch the clock, you gotta smile for the customer even if you feel like to cry. On the chciken ranch I holler any time I want. I like the chickens. I like the birds singing in the morning, i like a garden. On a chicken ranch you can enjoy nature. I love the nature--that's why I was a good rancher. This is the good life for me.
p. 53
Morry Finkelstein
What Jewish radical wasn't a vegetarian in the 1920? We were immigrants from small towns in Europe. The New York life made us sick. That rush--the speed-up in the shops--we couldn't even go to to the toilet on time. Our whole generation had stomach troubles. We we became vegetarians./
Evelyn Zepkin and Etta Jacobs--I knew them from New York when thy were in a group called the Hygeologists. They were going to save the world if everyone ate raw vegetables only. I once visited their camp near Peekskill. While I was there they said they are going to have supper. I looked for the tables--no tables! Everyone walked around, one with a raw potato, one with a raw carrot, one with raw cabbage.
There were a bunch of them in Petaluma in the 1920s--vegetarian anarchists. Some lived here and others visited for a few months at a time during teh slack season in teh New York needle trades. These working girls would hitchike across the country and take a vacation on a Petaluma chicken ranch.
Etta Jacobs' home was their headquareters. Yisroelke couldn't stand them--said they were parasites. FOr a few months they'd do nothing but eat vegetables and flirt. Some moved in with men here and it turned into permanent living arrangements. For years they didn't marry, because these women didn't belive in any man-made laws.
I first met PEtaluma, Petaluma met me, in 1928, ten years before I settled here. I came out to see California like every other JEwish radical in the 1920s. At the young Communist LEague in San Francisco I heard about the Jewish chicken ranchers in Petaluma. I came up here and stayed with teh Kokolovs. He was very much ahead of his time--a beard, long hair, an anarchist and a vegetarian. he had been a workngman and said, "The hell with the city. I'm going to raise chickens."
In those days, it was a miserable existence here. They worked so hard and they were so poor. [Laughing.:]
Raising chickens was backbreaking work--hauling sacks of feed, picking kale for making feed, taking care of sick chickens. ALl hours, seven days a week, no vacations, in all kinds of weather. you got that chicken-killing heat in the summers when the chickens would drop like flies, and then the freezing rains in the winter . . . the chicken house floods--can you imagine thousands of chicks swimming for their lives? [Laughing.:] Just cleaning those chicken houses between raises . . . a lot of prominent people in this community began by hiring themselves to shovel chicken shit out at chicken houses.
And it was the poverty of the shtetl. Outhouses, egg crates for chairs, ragged old clothes. In fact, the jewish rances even looked like the ugly muddy homes of the shtetl. No flowers. No landscaping. The Jewish ranches were deserts/
But still. I liked it. [Laughing.:] There was nature. There was leisure. There was freedom/ And there were people--all kinds of interesting people. This was an interesting place.
p. 82
Morris Rogin
. . . I paid them one hundred percent! I paid all the others one hundred perfecnt. Every time I made a little money I brought it ot my creditors. ALtogether it took me from 1937 to 1944 to pay back the fifteen thousand dollars I owed. I have letters from my creditors about it. One letter says, "I make it a point to show the younger elements of our company that there are still people who honor their obligations."
p. 83
Anna Rosenfeld Golden
Once my chldren asked me, "What do you believe? You don't go in shul. You're not religious. What do you believe?"
I said, "I believe you shouldn't steal and you hsouldn't lie. You should respect other people."
Another thing I told them: "You shouldn't be a strikebreaker. When the people strike, you should never cross the picket line."
Professor Eli Gordon
"Jews everywhere knew about Petaluma. They were on the map in those days, not simply because they were a Jewish agricultural settelemnt, but also because they had such deep cultural and political commitments. They were like every other American-Jewish immigrant community, only much more so. Iw ould compare them to the early kibbutzniks in Israel.
I knew the Petaluma community in the 1930s from the special persepctive of the SUnday school teacher. My first day there I was immediately thrown in the community's struggle between the Hebraicists and the Yiddishists. . . .
p. 202
Mike Gold
The chorus sang very left-wing songs. One night, when they were practicing at the Center, they started singing "Happy Birthday" to Stalin. In Yiddish! The board of directors was meeting in the next room. We banged the gavel for siloence, so they sang it again--in Russian! THey had a birthday party for Stalin in our Center!
p. 293
Celia Glazer Hochman
It's very strange to an affair at the Center because of all the young newcomers in the community. They are on some kind of religious trip and they know nothing about the old community. One of them came up to me at a United Jewish APpeal dinner and said, "Welcome to Congregation B'nai Israel. Who are you"
"Celia Hochman."
"I haven't seen you here before. Your family must have just moved to Petaluma."
I said, "My father-in-law was tarred and feathered here before you were born."
These people are not my cup of tea. I go to the Center once a year. to help the United Jewish APpeal raise moeny for Israel. When I volunteered back in the early seventies, some of the old-timers from the rekhte didn't like it: "Why do we need these Reds again?" I said, "We're all Jews The next time around, we'll all go in the concentration camps. Let's maintain unity where we can."
I'm not religous, but I'v ebecome very ethnocentric. That's why I'll go into the Center. Since the Split I've had no desire to be there.
p. 295
Stanley Bergowitz
. . . But it's a different kind of person at the Center now. These young couples have just come here from the big cities. They're part o a more mobile society where young people move around a lot. They live in Petaluma, but they work somewhere else. The town doesn't mean much to them. The Jewish community doesn't mean much to them. Roots don't mean much to them/ They could pick up and leave tomorrow.
To tell you the truth, I fend them kind of straight. They're busy working, husband and wife. so they can pay for the big house, the two cars, the one and a half kids, and all the luxuries. They're more concerned with money and status than us. They have different interests and they have the means to do as they please. You don't have to go to the Center to see friends when you can play golf at the COuntry Club or go to San Francisco for dinner in a fancy restaurant. They drop off their kids for Hebrew school and that's their community participation/ They don't need our kind of community. They didn't want to continue it. But frankly, I don't think their kind of mobility and isolation is a very healthy thing. I think everybody needs the kind of roots and community we have.
p. 303
Jacob Katz
. . . I believe Judaism will survive, in Petaluma and everywhere else. It is not a rational thing. I myself believe there is a certain mysticism in Judaism that keeps us in existence. It is an enigma, but after all these thousands of years. Judaism is still alive. That is our destiny.
p. 39
Ben Hochman
I spent my three years in Siberia. It was the northern part, hundreds of miles away from a railfroad. They took us by sled. No escape. The government paid the political prisoners six and a half rubles a month to work for the farmers there. I didn"t care so muhc for the money, but I wanted to work. I had an urget o show them that Jews can do it. We were forbidden from farmingin Russia, and then they turned the peasants against: "The Jews life off you." But I was raised on the Bible--we were an agricultural people in ancient times. I always wanted to do agricultural work. IN Siberia I plowed the ground, I cut hay with a scthe, I chopped wood. I was a political prisoner, but there you could be a free man. The land was free, the forests were free. you could build, you could hunt, you could fish. Everything was free.
p. 49
Hymie Golden
Anything you do, you gotta have a feeling you like it. Then you succeed. The most Jewish people in Petaluma, they didn't come here to get rich. You can't get rich from the chickens cause you're always gonna hit a bum makret one day.
The Jewish people in here, they came to have a better life. In the city, you gotta pinch the clock, you gotta smile for the customer even if you feel like to cry. On the chciken ranch I holler any time I want. I like the chickens. I like the birds singing in the morning, i like a garden. On a chicken ranch you can enjoy nature. I love the nature--that's why I was a good rancher. This is the good life for me.
p. 53
Morry Finkelstein
What Jewish radical wasn't a vegetarian in the 1920? We were immigrants from small towns in Europe. The New York life made us sick. That rush--the speed-up in the shops--we couldn't even go to to the toilet on time. Our whole generation had stomach troubles. We we became vegetarians./
Evelyn Zepkin and Etta Jacobs--I knew them from New York when thy were in a group called the Hygeologists. They were going to save the world if everyone ate raw vegetables only. I once visited their camp near Peekskill. While I was there they said they are going to have supper. I looked for the tables--no tables! Everyone walked around, one with a raw potato, one with a raw carrot, one with raw cabbage.
There were a bunch of them in Petaluma in the 1920s--vegetarian anarchists. Some lived here and others visited for a few months at a time during teh slack season in teh New York needle trades. These working girls would hitchike across the country and take a vacation on a Petaluma chicken ranch.
Etta Jacobs' home was their headquareters. Yisroelke couldn't stand them--said they were parasites. FOr a few months they'd do nothing but eat vegetables and flirt. Some moved in with men here and it turned into permanent living arrangements. For years they didn't marry, because these women didn't belive in any man-made laws.
I first met PEtaluma, Petaluma met me, in 1928, ten years before I settled here. I came out to see California like every other JEwish radical in the 1920s. At the young Communist LEague in San Francisco I heard about the Jewish chicken ranchers in Petaluma. I came up here and stayed with teh Kokolovs. He was very much ahead of his time--a beard, long hair, an anarchist and a vegetarian. he had been a workngman and said, "The hell with the city. I'm going to raise chickens."
In those days, it was a miserable existence here. They worked so hard and they were so poor. [Laughing.:]
Raising chickens was backbreaking work--hauling sacks of feed, picking kale for making feed, taking care of sick chickens. ALl hours, seven days a week, no vacations, in all kinds of weather. you got that chicken-killing heat in the summers when the chickens would drop like flies, and then the freezing rains in the winter . . . the chicken house floods--can you imagine thousands of chicks swimming for their lives? [Laughing.:] Just cleaning those chicken houses between raises . . . a lot of prominent people in this community began by hiring themselves to shovel chicken shit out at chicken houses.
And it was the poverty of the shtetl. Outhouses, egg crates for chairs, ragged old clothes. In fact, the jewish rances even looked like the ugly muddy homes of the shtetl. No flowers. No landscaping. The Jewish ranches were deserts/
But still. I liked it. [Laughing.:] There was nature. There was leisure. There was freedom/ And there were people--all kinds of interesting people. This was an interesting place.
p. 82
Morris Rogin
. . . I paid them one hundred percent! I paid all the others one hundred perfecnt. Every time I made a little money I brought it ot my creditors. ALtogether it took me from 1937 to 1944 to pay back the fifteen thousand dollars I owed. I have letters from my creditors about it. One letter says, "I make it a point to show the younger elements of our company that there are still people who honor their obligations."
p. 83
Anna Rosenfeld Golden
Once my chldren asked me, "What do you believe? You don't go in shul. You're not religious. What do you believe?"
I said, "I believe you shouldn't steal and you hsouldn't lie. You should respect other people."
Another thing I told them: "You shouldn't be a strikebreaker. When the people strike, you should never cross the picket line."
Professor Eli Gordon
"Jews everywhere knew about Petaluma. They were on the map in those days, not simply because they were a Jewish agricultural settelemnt, but also because they had such deep cultural and political commitments. They were like every other American-Jewish immigrant community, only much more so. Iw ould compare them to the early kibbutzniks in Israel.
I knew the Petaluma community in the 1930s from the special persepctive of the SUnday school teacher. My first day there I was immediately thrown in the community's struggle between the Hebraicists and the Yiddishists. . . .
p. 202
Mike Gold
The chorus sang very left-wing songs. One night, when they were practicing at the Center, they started singing "Happy Birthday" to Stalin. In Yiddish! The board of directors was meeting in the next room. We banged the gavel for siloence, so they sang it again--in Russian! THey had a birthday party for Stalin in our Center!
p. 293
Celia Glazer Hochman
It's very strange to an affair at the Center because of all the young newcomers in the community. They are on some kind of religious trip and they know nothing about the old community. One of them came up to me at a United Jewish APpeal dinner and said, "Welcome to Congregation B'nai Israel. Who are you"
"Celia Hochman."
"I haven't seen you here before. Your family must have just moved to Petaluma."
I said, "My father-in-law was tarred and feathered here before you were born."
These people are not my cup of tea. I go to the Center once a year. to help the United Jewish APpeal raise moeny for Israel. When I volunteered back in the early seventies, some of the old-timers from the rekhte didn't like it: "Why do we need these Reds again?" I said, "We're all Jews The next time around, we'll all go in the concentration camps. Let's maintain unity where we can."
I'm not religous, but I'v ebecome very ethnocentric. That's why I'll go into the Center. Since the Split I've had no desire to be there.
p. 295
Stanley Bergowitz
. . . But it's a different kind of person at the Center now. These young couples have just come here from the big cities. They're part o a more mobile society where young people move around a lot. They live in Petaluma, but they work somewhere else. The town doesn't mean much to them. The Jewish community doesn't mean much to them. Roots don't mean much to them/ They could pick up and leave tomorrow.
To tell you the truth, I fend them kind of straight. They're busy working, husband and wife. so they can pay for the big house, the two cars, the one and a half kids, and all the luxuries. They're more concerned with money and status than us. They have different interests and they have the means to do as they please. You don't have to go to the Center to see friends when you can play golf at the COuntry Club or go to San Francisco for dinner in a fancy restaurant. They drop off their kids for Hebrew school and that's their community participation/ They don't need our kind of community. They didn't want to continue it. But frankly, I don't think their kind of mobility and isolation is a very healthy thing. I think everybody needs the kind of roots and community we have.
p. 303
Jacob Katz
. . . I believe Judaism will survive, in Petaluma and everywhere else. It is not a rational thing. I myself believe there is a certain mysticism in Judaism that keeps us in existence. It is an enigma, but after all these thousands of years. Judaism is still alive. That is our destiny.
April 18, 2022
This is a niche title that I read because my wife bought it for me after we spent a nice long weekend in Petaluma, a surprisingly cool destination!
The book tells the story, stitched together from a series of interviews, about a group of mostly socialist/communist Jewish refugees from Russia/Eastern Europe after the Russian Revolution who settled in Petaluma (about an hour north of San Francisco). They took up chicken farming with the intention of moving to the eventual Jewish homeland in Israel and contributing to the country with their newfound agricultural skills. Well, they ended up staying in Petaluma, and the book follows these people and two generations of their progeny. As I said, this is a niche book. It's really a story about one immigrant community in the United States - how they adapted and assimilated into a new culture.
One interesting takeaway I got from the book was its mention that the prevailing opinion of the Petaluma Jews on the Holocaust survivors who settled in the area after WWII was that they were uniformly selfish, conniving, opportunistic people. The thinking being that the good ones were killed off and the bad ones were the operators who managed to find a way to survive. I'm sure this is a very controversial opinion and one I had not come across before, but it makes sense, given human nature.
The book tells the story, stitched together from a series of interviews, about a group of mostly socialist/communist Jewish refugees from Russia/Eastern Europe after the Russian Revolution who settled in Petaluma (about an hour north of San Francisco). They took up chicken farming with the intention of moving to the eventual Jewish homeland in Israel and contributing to the country with their newfound agricultural skills. Well, they ended up staying in Petaluma, and the book follows these people and two generations of their progeny. As I said, this is a niche book. It's really a story about one immigrant community in the United States - how they adapted and assimilated into a new culture.
One interesting takeaway I got from the book was its mention that the prevailing opinion of the Petaluma Jews on the Holocaust survivors who settled in the area after WWII was that they were uniformly selfish, conniving, opportunistic people. The thinking being that the good ones were killed off and the bad ones were the operators who managed to find a way to survive. I'm sure this is a very controversial opinion and one I had not come across before, but it makes sense, given human nature.
October 6, 2023
this book was amazing. i learned about the long history of a very small and close knit community told by the people who were there. the book is full of asynchrony and unreliable narrators but that’s what made it so real. i felt like i was really sitting down and listening to these stories. would highly recommend to anyone of jewish heritage but also everyone else.
Want to Read
September 4, 2024I need to read this already... lol
September 19, 2012
This was a great book. It was told from the early Jewish settlers of Petaluma who started chicken farms. It was interesting that many of the families thought that their farming was practicing for going to a kibbutz in new Israel, but they never got there. Chicken farming was hard work.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews