Today there is little evidence in the landscape around Hirsch, Saskatchewan to suggest it was once an active Jewish agricultural colony. The cemetery, now disused, is a Provincial Historic Site; the lone surviving synagogue, now converted into a residence, is barely recognizable as such. Yet in the early1890s Hirsch was the destination for hundreds of Jewish refugees fleeing economic turmoil and pogroms—anti-Jewish riots—in eastern Europe’s Pale of Settlement, a region of western Russia to which Jewish settlement was confined.
Strangely, Hirsch’s history is not well known, although the broad outlines of Jewish agricultural settlement on the prairies have received attention from a variety of perspectives. Until recently, the literature on Jewish settlement on the Prairies has been descriptive rather than analytical. Abraham Arnold, Cyril Leonoff, and Simon Belkin established the broad outline of its history, with Leonoff also providing an account of the settlement at Wapella, based on interviews with original settlers. The failed attempt to establish a Jewish farm village at Bender Hamlet in Manitoba’s Interlake was examined by James Richtik and Danny Hutch.[1] Jewish settlement was analyzed as a Utopian experiment by Anthony Rasporich, who concluded that many early Jewish settlements were suffocated by paternalism, [2] while Yossi Katz and John Lehr attempted to explain the demise of Jewish agricultural communities in terms of conflict between religious demands, the requirements of the Dominion Lands Act, and the lack of a strong theocratic control within Judaism. [3] More recently, in-depth studies of individual Jewish colonies have appeared, notably Anna Feldman’s examinations of the stability of the Sonnenfeld colony, in which she argued that Jewish farmers were no more likely to leave the land than their Gentile neighbours. [4] The only other in-depth published studies of a Jewish farm colony are Theodore Friedgut’s meticulously documented examinations of the forces that shaped the Jewish colony of Lipton. [5] The origins and role of the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) worldwide has been described by Kennee Switzer-Rakos; more recently John Lehr reviewed the role of the JCA in Canada. [6]
Hirsch was not the first attempt to establish a Jewish agricultural settlement on the Prairies; there were two earlier attempts, at Moosomin and Wapella, in the 1880s, but only Wapella survived, [7] but Hirsch was unique in its genesis. It was the first Jewish colony to be established by the Young Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Society of Montreal, with aid received from the Baron de Hirsch Foundation.
Its formation, management, and eventual decline illustrate the role of political, social, and economic ideologies in sponsored settlement and the tensions occasioned by attempts to impose institutional values on mostly involuntary migrants.
Sarah Carter, in her study of Indigenous agriculture on the Prairies, has pointed out that before the arrival of Jews at Hirsch, Indigenous people in the area covered by Treaty Four—and the westernmost part of Treaty Two, the region within which Hirsch was located—had engaged in farming following the conclusion of the numbered Treaties. Their endeavours ultimately failed, not due to lack of prior experience in agriculture or any cultural or religious taboos, but due to lack of capital, the vagaries of the climate, and bureaucratic ineptitude on the part of the Dominion Government. [8] There are striking parallels with the experiences of the Jewish immigrants who were settled at Hirsch.
Events in Europe and Montreal
The decision to establish a Jewish farm colony in Saskatchewan was taken in direct response to a refugee crisis. In the 1880s, Jews in Russia’s Pale of Settlement experienced a wave of pogroms ignited by the assassination of Czar Alexander II. Their misery was compounded by changes in the economy that eliminated many occupations traditionally held by Jews. Many fled from Russia to western Europe where Jewish aid agencies assisted their emigration to North America. The result was a deluge of Jews, mostly of an urban background, into the port cities of the North American eastern seaboard, one of which was Montreal. Those who arrived in Montreal tended to remain there, attempting to make a living practising the small trades and peddling. The Young Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Society of Montreal (YMHBS) gave aid to impoverished Jewish arrivals but its resources were limited. [9] It was soon overwhelmed and sought aid from the better-funded Baron de Hirsch Institute. [10]