A Home on the Range

Infobox Film
name = A Home on the Range: The Jewish Chicken Ranchers of Petaluma


image_size = 100px
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director = Bonnie Burt and Judith Montell
producer = Bonnie Burt and Judith Montell
writer =
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music =
cinematography =
editing =
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released = 2002 (USA)
runtime = 100 min.
country = USA
language = English
budget =
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website = http://www.jewishchickenranchers.com/press/
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"A Home on the Range: The Jewish Chicken Ranchers of Petaluma" is a 2002 documentary by Bonnie Burt and Judith Montell about a group of Jews who fled from pogroms in Eastern Europe and prejudice in America to organized a socialist society in rural Northern California, where they relied on raising chickens to support themselves.

ummary

“Who said Jews couldn't be farmers? Spitin as I, who would harm us?”” Scott Gerber, a former resident of Petaluma, belts out the lyrics to his acoustic guitar. Although the chicken ranches in Petaluma have more recently been abandoned, Scott's maintained his Jewish culture and his love for the land, working as a cowboy and singing Yiddish folk songs.

"A Home on the Range" shows old photographs and archival color footage of Petaluma that bring the town to life. These visuals, along with interviews of former residents, reconstruct an idealistic society that put in hard work collecting and cleaning eggs but enjoyed lectures given by top notch Jewish poets and philosophers given at the Community Hall. United by their culture, the Jews of Petaluma cared for one another as extended family and survived the antisemitism of pre-World War II and anticommunist sentiments of the McCarthy era. But with time and assimilation the quirky community dwindled, and, today, they're chicken ranches have been replaced by telecommunication, dairy farms and vineyards.

For many of the Jews in Petaluma, Judaism was more of a culture than a religion. One former resident says that people kept the holidays for the social attachment, and another spouts, “Judaism—there wasn't any!” In fact, when they were building their meeting hall it was almost unanimously decided to not build a synagogue—until they learned it could be a tax write off. For them, Judaism had nothing to do with God. Instead, it meant that they spoke Yiddish, ate matzah, and wanted to form a kibbutz. But most of all it meant they were outsiders to American society. They were second rate citizens, called names and not allowed in Country Clubs.

They had fled pogroms in Russia and antisemitism in urban America to live in a rural Jewish community, but still they faced antisemitism from their surrounding neighbors. One woman remembers, “they used to call us dirty Jew.” And another woman remembers a particularly frightening night when an antisemitic neighbor threw a barn party and the drunk and rowdy crowd terrified her parents so much that they couldn't sleep that night. These incidents ingrained the Jews with a painful feeling of being “lesser” than other Americans. But nothing can compare to the violent night that Gentile leaders in the neighboring community took out their antisemitism and anticommunist fears through brute force against the men of Petaluma.

Strangely, it wasn't prejudice that destroyed their community, but acceptance. Once Jewish Americans were no longer looked down on, they assimilated into society and the vibrant community of chicken ranchers in Petaluma dwindled. One former resident who grew up on a ranch and raised her children on a ranch expresses her mixed feelings about assimilation. She pines that she lost, “the core,” sense of attachment but in exchange, “we were accepted in as Americans.”

Production

For the past twenty years, Bonnie Burt has been making documentaries about Jewish life. Her films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art and at Lincoln Center in New York. cite web
title = A Home on the Range: The Jewish Chicken Ranchers of Petaluma
work =
publisher = Bonnie Burt and Judith Montell
date =
url =http://www.jewishchickenranchers.com/index.htm
accessdate = August 6 ] Bonnie says she'd heard about Petaluma before she moved to California from the East Coast. But it wasn't until 1992 at the Madrid Jewish Film Festical that she teamed up with Judy Montell, and the two began to work on the project together.

Reception

"A Home on the Range" was well received. The San Diego Jewish Film Festival called it a modest film that "reads almost like an epic myth." cite web
title =San Diego Jewish Film Festival
publisher =San Diego Center for Jewish Culture
date =
url =http://sdcjc.lfjcc.org/sdjff/2003/feb_9.php
accessdate = August 6 ] Other reviews praised it for being a through and entertaining documentary that raises issues that are still relevant in Jewish American society today.

Notes

References

*cite news
last = Fishkoff
first =Sue
coauthors =
title = When left-wingers and chicken wings populated Petaluma
work =
pages =
language =English
publisher =The Jewish News Weekly
date =7 May 1999
url =http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/11172/edition_id/214/format/html/displaystory.html
accessdate = August 6

*cite web
title = A Home on the Range: The Jewish Chicken Ranchers of Petaluma
work =
publisher = Bonnie Burt and Judith Montell
date =
url =http://www.jewishchickenranchers.com/index.htm
accessdate = August 6

*cite web
title =San Diego Jewish Film Festival
publisher =San Diego Center for Jewish Culture
date =
url =http://sdcjc.lfjcc.org/sdjff/2003/feb_9.php
accessdate = August 6

*cite web
title = A Home on the Range: The Jewish Chicken Ranchers of Petaluma
publisher=New England Film
date = November 2002
url =http://www.newenglandfilm.com/news/archives/02november/bjff.htm
accessdate = August 6

ee also

Other Documentaries about Jews in America:
*"My Yiddish Momme McCoy"
*"Awake Zion"
*"From Swastika to Jim Crow"
*"Professional Revolutionary"
*"Song of a Jewish Cowboy"

More information on Jewish communes:
*Kibbutz
*Moshav
*Socialism
*Israel

External links

* [http://www.jewishchickenranchers.com/makers/index.htm A Home on the Range's official website]
* [http://www.petalumamuseum.com The Petaluma Museum]
* [http://www.jewishsf.com/bk000818/bnpetaluma.shtml 75th Anaversery of the Jewish Community Center in Petaluma]
* [http://www.petalumachamber.com/pages/history.shtml Petaluma Chamber of Commerce]