Steve and I are proud of our heritage. So when our friends Paul and Lisa invited us to attend an event honoring the connection between Russian Jews and South Jersey we jumped at the chance. The event was held at the original site of the Alliance Colony in Pittsgrove NJ that originated back in 1882.
Original Alliance Synagogue and Museum
The Alliance Colony was founded on May 10, 1882, by 43 families that were soon joined by many more. This was the first successful Jewish agricultural colony in the United States. It became the destination for Jewish families fleeing the oppression and violence in Russia. A group of intellectuals operating out of Odessa felt that the way to free themselves was to establish independent agricultural communities in the U.S. and Canada.
Photos of Alliance Colony families through the years
These farming communities were funded by many charitable groups. Soon, other Jewish farming communities were formed in Carmel, Rosenhayn, and Estellville. The Alliance Colony grew into the connected village centers of Alliance, Norma and Brotmanville.
“A visitor will observe good houses, improved and thoroughly up to date outbuildings, healthy and well-conditioned stock, and crops growing that are admirably adapted to the character of the soil.”
Antique Asparagus Buncher Farm Implement
It was group of wealthy people in Manhattan that formed the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society in order to help Jews fleeing the pogroms in Russia. This group purchased 1150 acres in Pittsgrove Township and had three barracks built to house the emigrants. Those original colonists consisted of 250 men, women, and children. But that number grew quickly. Families were provided with farms from 13 to 15 acres for a price of $350 that was payable over 10 years with interest. But the terms adjusted as the settlers encountered difficulties.
Antique Kitchen Tools
Those settlers were not only new to farming but to a new country as well. New Jersey climate and soil presented a unique challenge because it was sandy loam. Fortunately they learned that it was good for growing fruits, berries, grapes and sweet potatoes. They were able to grow very fine strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, cherries, pears, peaches and immense quantities of sweet potatoes of excellent quality.
Antique Judaica
Another bonus was the Alliance’s proximity to a railroad line in Norma which allowed the settlers to ship their crops out to the main market in New York City.
Stories of a Jewish Farming Community in South Jersey
Alliance Beach Photos
The farming families supplemented their diets by raising cows and chickens on their farms.
Though my grandparents and my mom came to this country from Russia in 1923, I never knew anything about this Jewish farming colony just across the Delaware River from us. Like those farmers, my grandparents and mom fled from the pogroms in fear of their lives. Their savior, as my grandfather always used to call him, was a cousin Dr. Nathan Seidman. He sponsored them to come to Philadelphia.
They arrived with nothing but suitcases and shabbat candlesticks. But their lives were much different from those farmers. My grandmother earned a good living as a seamstress. And my grandfather was in business for himself with a pushcart from which he sold mens socks and women’s hosiery.
Together they amassed enough money to build a home with their haberdashery business downstairs, in the Queens Village neighborhood of Philadelphia. They paid cash. No mortgage!
Over the years that business earned them enough money to buy the “Cambridge Villa” as a summer home in Ventnor NJ. So, even though I grew up spending my summers at the Jersey Shore, I never even heard of the Alliance Colony of Pittsgrove NJ!
After a delicious and bountiful kosher lunch buffet at the event in Pittsgrove we were invited to wander about and explore the historic buildings at the site.
Bema of the Alliance Colony Synagogue
The first building we went into was the original synagogue and now, museum. It was a very small building that the community outgrew so another Shul was built a block or so away.
The artist, Jonathan Blum, who painted the mural is in the blue shirt and gold pants.
As we strolled the grounds a bit further we came upon the mural that was being unveiled and the main focus of the event we were attending. The Alliance Mural was the result of ACRe (Alliance Colony Reboot) working with acclaimed portrait artist Jonathan Blum to paint a colorful Alliance mural depicting the history of the Alliance Colony immigrating to America and settling in Pittsgrove, NJ in 1882.
One of the original homes in its glory days
Photo Credit: AllianceColony.com
Same house as above today. Sadly, the years were not kind to the house!
As per the website: “The mural covers three exterior walls on the garage building behind the Moses Bayuk House listed on the National Register of Historic Places, footsteps from the historic Alliance Cemetery and Alliance Synagogue. The mural is visible from nearby publicly accessible locations including the cemetery and even passers-by on the county road, Gershal Ave.”
Beginning of mural that tells the story of Alliance Colony Pittsgrove NJ
The Easterly Wall shows the pogroms in Odessa, ocean liner SS Australia transporting the first 43 Russian Jewish families from Hamburg to Castle Garden in Manhattan in 1882,. It also depicts turn of the century farm life in New Jersey and a portrait tribute to the pioneering Brotman family.
Two more walls of the mural continue to tell Alliance Colony’s story
Rabbi Egg and Mule
The Northerly Wall represents the merging of two waves of Jewish immigration in Salem County, first escaping Czarist Russia in 1882 and again after the Holocaust in the 1950s. Paintings of a working mule, egg and chick along with a Nazi concentration camp guard tower with barbed wire. Also shown there are Isaac Krassenstein, known as the Hasid of Alliance, was a shochet, a kosher ritual slaughterer of poultry.
And so the story continues!
The Westerly Wall depicts the road sign at the corner of Shiff and Gershal Avenues, named for the German Jewish patrons who managed the Alliance Land Trust. Included in this mural is a grapevine, a portrait of Moses Bayuk holding grapes and the Moses Bayuk house, a tribute to his daughter Bluma’s folk art.
ACRe was awarded a grant from the 2024 Salem County Arts Re-Grant program in order to paint the Alliance Mural.
In my next post I will tell you more about this amazing locations with details about the newer synagogue and the Alliance Cemetery.
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