Middlebury Prof Previews Journal Article On Poultney's Jewish Past

Summary

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Sure enough, [Robert Schine]'s research prompted him to call the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, an educational center founded in 1947 to preserve a "documentary heritage" of American Jewry. When he asked for records of Slate Valley Jews, a staffer photocopied an 1867 "Minutes" book from Poultney, Vermont.

According to Schine, who consulted with a historian from Brandeis University, the 1867 Minutes book is noteworthy for several reasons. First, it predates an 1870s record of Burlington's Jewish residents - which, until recently, was considered the oldest record of an organized Jewish community in Vermont. What's more, the Poultney book offers what Schine calls "linguistic fossils": records of how one group of uneducated, rural merchants pronounced Hebrew.

"I don't think there are too many documents like this," Schine reflects of the Poultney Minutes book. "These Jews are not Reform Jews, they're not urban, they're not particularly well-educated . . . They were just trying to set up the basic structures of a Jewish community in this little slate-mining town."

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Extract

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Middlebury Prof Previews Journal Article On Poultney's Jewish Past

When one thinks of New England destinations for the Jewish diaspora, Poultney probably isn't the first town that comes to mind. But new research from a Midd...

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