In the Catskills: A Century of Jewish Experience in "The Mountains" (9 page)

By the eve of World War I, there was a Jewish village network in southern Ulster County, Sullivan County, and, to a lesser extent, in Orange County (around Port Jervis). Nearly all of these inhabitants were Eastern European immigrants speaking Yiddish and heavily accented English; nearly all were transplanted there after some years in New York City and were living in a kind of uneasy symbiosis with indigenous Christians. They did not have anywhere near the capital and experience to begin such businesses as banks, insurance agencies, creameries, lumber yards, blacksmith and harnessmaking establishments, hardware stores, plumbing supply stores, and machinery dealerships, businesses that remained out of their reach for several decades.

Notes

  
1
.   Evers,
The Catskills
, 659, 690.

  
2
.   “Jewish Agricultural Unit Shows Sanitation Exhibit,”
Kingston Daily Freeman
.

  
3
.   Evers,
The Catskills
, 456.

  
4
.   Wakefield,
To the Mountains by Rail
.

  
5
.   Helmer,
O.&W.: The Long Life and Slow Death of the New York, Ontario & Western Ry
, 1–29; Wakefield,
To the Mountains
, 8.

  
6
.   Helmer,
O.&W
., 51, 67.

  
7
.   Wakefield,
Coal Boats to Tidewater
; Shaughnessy,
Delaware and Hudson
, 1–29; Sanderson,
The Delaware and Hudson Canalway
.

  
8
.   Wakefield,
To the Mountains
, 5–6; Levenson, “No Hebrews Taken,” 14.

  
9
.   Elliott,
Centreville to Woodridge
, 39.

10
.   Wakefield,
To the Mountains
, 68, 71.

11
.   Evers,
The Catskills
, 25.

12
.   Blumberg, “Those Were the Days,” September 1993, 18; Webster, reproduction of the log of the canal boat
Iowa
on the Delaware and Hudson Canal, Sept. 7 to 23, 1891; Wakefield,
To the Mountains
, 35.

13
.   Wakefield,
To the Mountains
, 17, 181, 182–84; DeLisser,
Picturesque Catskills—Greene County
.

14
.   Goodwin and Levine, “A Historical Review,” 12.

15
.   Interviews with Bruce W. Gerson, June 18, 1992, with Frances S. Gerson, June 21, 1992, and with David Gerson, June 22, 1992; U.S. Bureau of the Census,
1900 Census of Sullivan County
, 293b.

16
.   Abraham Jaffe, interviewed by Clarence Steinberg, May 4, 1987: Wakefield,
To the Mountains
, 167–70; Helmer,
O.&W
., 62, 67, 42; DeLisser,
Picturesque Catskills—Greene County
.

17
.   Quoted in Wakefield,
To the Mountains
, 80.

18
.   U.S. Bureau of the Census,
1990 Census of Sullivan County
, 293b; interviews with Bruce W. Gerson, June 18, 1992, with Frances S. Gerson, June 21, 1992, and with David Gerson, June 22, 1992.

19
.   Miller and Roher,
50 Golden Years
; Gold, “Jewish Agriculture in the Catskills, 1900–1920,” 31–49.

20
.   Gold, “Jewish Agriculture in the Catskills, 1900–1920,” 35.

21
.   Herman J. Levine, interview with Abraham D. Lavender, July 22, 1982.

22
.   H.J. Levine, “The Jewish Farmers’ Contributions to Ellenville’s Growth,” 52.

23
.   Rhine, “Race Prejudice at Summer Resorts,” 527.

24
.   Evers,
The Catskills
, 691.

25
.   “The Anti-Hebrew Crusade,”
New York Times
, 1.

26
.   Evers,
The Catskills
, 467, 476–79, 516–19.

27
.   Davidson, “A Glimpse at Jewish Life in the Mountains.”

28
.   Evers,
The Catskills
, 663, 695; Blumberg, “Those Were the Days,” December 1992, 21.

29
.   Miller and Roher,
50 Golden Years
, 27–30.

30
.   Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society,
Annual Report for the Year 1908
, 17–18.

31
.   Goodwin and H.J. Levine, “A Historical Review”; Robinson, “Agricultural Activities of the Jews in America.”

32
.   Fishman,
The Jews of the United States
, 38.

33
.   U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990 and 1910 censuses of Sullivan and Ulster counties.

34
.   See Lavender, “United States Ethnic Groups in 1790: Given Names as Suggestions of Ethnic Identity,” 36–66, and Lavender, “Hispanic Given Names in Five United States Cities: Onomastics as a Research Tool in Ethnic Identity,” 105–25.

35
.   U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1900 and 1910 censuses of Ulster County.

36
.   Rischin,
The Promised City
, 29.

37
.   Davidson, “Jewish Farm Movement,” 2.

38
.   Goodwin and Levine, “A Historical Review,” 14.

39
.   Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society,
Annual Report for the Year 1910
, 29.

40
.   Ibid., 30–31.

41
.   Nass, “I Remember,” 73.

42
.   Strauss, “When the All-Inclusive Weekly Rate Was $9,” xx–3.

43
.   Foster, “The Magic Words in the Catskills: ‘More, More, More,’” xx–33.

44
.   Kanfer,
A Summer World
, 75.

45
.   Miller and Roher,
50 Golden Years
, 28.

46
.   Ibid., 29.

47
.   Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society,
Annual Report for the Year 1908
, 19.

48
.   “Notable Event in Ellenville,”
Ellenville Journal
; “New Synagogue Dedicated,”
Ellenville Journal
, 45; Miller and Roher,
50 Golden Years
, 76.

49
.   Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society,
Annual Report for the Year 1906
, 8.

50
.   Ibid.,
1911
, 29.

51
.   Yaffe, “The Leurenkill Farmers Start a Hebrew School,” 59.

52
.   Ibid.

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——. “Those Were the Days.”
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——. “Jewish Farm Movement.”
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——. “United States Ethnic Groups in 1790: Given Names as Suggestions of Ethnic Identity.”
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