A Good Harvest

Samuel Eichelbaum

1933

For four years now he had been working the two hundred acres of farm land they had given him when he arrived in Argentina from Russia. The Roschpina colony of Entre Ríos was the most cheerful one in the area, but this fact didn’t affect his aversion to rural tasks. When he’d sailed for these lands, he’d agreed to accept the farm solely with the…

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Samuel Eichelbaum, born in a Jewish Colonization Association colony, became a famous Argentine fiction writer and playwright. After leaving the region, he moved to Buenos Aires, where he became self-educated. This story depicts the allure that cities presented to many colonists, who found rural life neither interesting nor conducive to progress. In particular, Eichelbaum presents agricultural work as feminine (defended only by the women in Bernando’s family) and an impediment to masculine creativity. However, the fear of destitute Jews visibly roaming the cities guided the concerns of JCA administrators, who kept detailed records of those who left.

Creator Bio

Samuel Eichelbaum

1894–1967

The son of Russian immigrants, Samuel Eichelbaum was a leading Argentine dramatist in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, his plays a mainstay of the Buenos Aires theatrical season. He was raised amidst the Jewish agricultural colonies, which provided the inspiration for his early short fiction. “A Good Harvest” drew on his own family’s experience: his father, who found the isolation of the colonies stultifying, burned two of his fields and moved the family to the capital. Eichelbaum’s plays are known for their intense self-analysis and introspection, their probing of human motivation, and their searching for hidden motives behind even the most trivial acts. Several of his plays feature urban, middle-class Jewish characters.

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