Susan Leader€“ 23-July- 2008- To Life! A Celebration of Vermont Jewish Women

About this film

Susan Leader was born in Springfield, Vermont in 1951. Her life story is rooted in both the Jewish-American experience and the back-to-the-land movement of the early 1950's in rural Vermont. Her grandfather left Poland and settled in Bennington, Vermont about 1910. There he led religious services, gave Hebrew lessons and opened a meat market and grocery store. As his finances improved prospered, he purchased farmland and property in the downtown area. Her parents met and married in college. As a young couple, the Leaders joined Helen and Scott Nearing in Stratton, Vermont where they were part of the early back-to-the-land movement. After spending three years in Palestine where they witnessed the birth of the State of Israel in 1948, they returned to Vermont and realized their dream to farm their own land. Her father also worked at a variety of jobs in order to support his wife and three children. For Susan, it was a difficult way to grow up. She felt poor, Jewish, and different from her classmates in the one room schoolhouse that she attended. One summer while working at an artists' co-op in Weston, she fell in love with making pottery. In 1969 Susan enrolled in pottery classes at…

Directors & creators

DAVAR: The Vermont Jewish Women's History Project

Subjects

Vermont; Land movement; potter

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