Re: appendix, are Jews never farmers?

Do not forget that for centuries Jews were forced to live in cities, their homeland was occupied by all kinds of other people: Babylonians, Romans, Turks, Brits, etc. What do you do in a city, if you are not allowed to have land? And, then, even if your great-great parents were farmers, how
do you cultivate a wish to become a farmer? I know of only one case among many, many descendants.

Jan de Koning

Jan,
I've seen the argument about what Jews were not allowed to do. Consider giving that argument closer examination. I will give you an example. It is often written that the first ghetto was forced upon the Jews in Venice and this is totally specious. a "ghet" is a Jewish device used to segregate Jewish communities. A ghet was established in Brooklyn a few years ago and reported in the NY Times. It was, of course, established by a Jewish community as the first ghetto in Venice was established by the Jewish community to keep them segregated from gentiles.
Your remark that the Jewish homeland was occupied is the clue. Shepherding is a diaspora behavior. Jews overwhelmingly live in diaspora, not in Palestine, though they say their homeland is Palestine. Communities that move from one nation to another and do not integrate with the peoples of their host are peripatetic or nomadic communities. That's what shepherds are. That's what Jews do.
The key word is "own" land. Samaritans farm even when they don't own the land. Tenant farmers farm other people's land. I don't know of any Jewish sharecroppers or tenant farmers.
As for the Turks, Christians were a slave class in the Ottoman Empire. Jews were a privileged class. If you read the article I posted, you see that learned Jews prefer cities.
I would also refer you to MacDonald's chapter on Reactive anti-Semitism in the Late Roman Empire in Separation and its Discontents, but regardless, if we take genesis, shepherding is always preferred and not because anyone is imposing it on the patriarchs. It is their heritage. I would suggest that diaspora is the preferred state of Jewish communities, not nationalism. I have to stick with my original suggestion that genesis is pushing shepherding, the primary symbol of the Old and New Testaments and that by and large orthodox Jews (real Jews) recognize this and eschew farming.

rich
Received on Thu Jan 6 12:42:18 2005