Issue link: http://tcnj.uberflip.com/i/773925
40 WINTER 2017 40 WINTER 2017 Family portrait Preceding page: Meyer and Fannie Gellman and their youngest son, Manny, who sent three sons to TCNJ. This page, top: As Jews, Meyer and Fannie weren't allowed to own land in Russia, so it was a proud day when they bought their New Jersey farm. Bottom left: Gary Gellman's aunts and uncles, including Rose, now 98 (far right). Bottom right: Uncle Nathan amid the corn. A fter more than a half-century of farming, Meyer and Fannie Gellman, Jewish immigrants from Russia, sold their Englishtown, New Jersey, farm in 1959, but the two tractors they used to sow their fields remain in the family, and still run. Their grandson, filmmaker Gary Gellman '89, tells the story of his family's farm in his documentary Gellman American Dream. Part celebration of a proud New Jersey family, part chronicle of a hardworking generation, the film, he says, captures a chapter in New Jersey history. "There are history lessons in every family's story," he says. "My grandparents helped build America through farming. It was a labor of love and family." Farming is not typically associated with Jewish-American culture. But an estimated 250 Jewish-owned farms peppered the landscape of the Garden State when Meyer Gellman came to America in 1905. A garment worker by trade, Meyer turned to farming to better support his growing family. After several years of renting land, in 1920 he and Fannie bought their 100-acre farm, where they grew beans and strawberries, eggplants and tomatoes. They raised chickens alongside their nine children. Four generations of Gellmans still live in New Jersey — all but one of the Gellmans' children stayed in the state. Manny, Gary's father and the youngest of the Gellman siblings, worked on the farm until it was sold. His three sons, Myron '86, Gary, and Brian '91, all went to TCNJ. And those two tractors? Gary keeps them on his own land in Monmouth County as a tangible reminder of the farm, which, even among later generations, is still often referred to as "home." —Kara Pothier MAT '08 CLASS NOTES