2015 Fall Newsletter

FALL 2015, VOLUME 18 ISSUE 3

Friends of Historic Vineland

Fall Edition

Continued on the next page

The Jewish Community

of Vineland

Vineland, like America itself, has seen wave

after wave of immigrants. When Landis founded

Vineland, he hoped that New Englanders would move

from the relatively harsh land of New England, to the

mild and productive land of South Jersey. This did not

happen, and within a short period of time, he changed

his mind and decided to encourage Italians to settle his

town. His efforts resulted in this area becoming one of

the largest rural areas populated by Italians. However,

while this was going on, another equally revolutionary

migration was taking place in our south Jersey area—

that of the migration of the Jews of Eastern Europe to

the lands surrounding Vineland.

The story of the Jews has always been a stormy

one. We could start with their enslavement by the

Egyptians, their subsequent release, their conquest of

the area of Jerusalem, their destruction by the Romans,

and so on But, to make things more simple and related

to the history of Vineland, let’s go to more recent times.

Jews were never well accepted in Christian

areas. So, over the centuries, thousands of Jews migrat-

ed to Poland and Russia where the population was

scarce and the area huge. At first, the Jews did fairly

well, especially those involved in commerce. But in

1791, with the conquest of Poland by Russia, the Jews

were confined to particular areas of the enlarged Rus-

sian Empire by the Russians. This area was referred to

as the Pale of Settlement. The word “pale” comes from

the Roman word palus or post and was meant to mean

the “posted” lands of the Jews.

The Jews were heavily taxed and restricted as to

where they could live and travel so that their economic

position was not a very happy one. Because they were

so restricted, they did not consider themselves to be true

citizens of the Russian empire because they had to live

in their own area. Because of this, the word “Jew”

which refers to religion, also became a nationality. So if

you asked one for his nationality, he would say “Jewish”

rather than “Russian.”

As one of my professors in college kept telling

us when we complained about work in classes, “Things

are never so bad that they cannot get worse.” And, sure

enough, the Russians made it worse for the Jews in 1881

when “pogroms” were started. The violence of the

pogroms was greatest in Poland and the Ukraine where

there was a large Jewish presence. The assassination of

the progressive Tsar Alexander II in 1881 gave

rise to rumors that Jews were responsible which helped

exacerbate the violence of the pogroms. During these

pogroms thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed,

and many families were reduced to poverty. These

pogroms continued for years and actually increased in

violence. This resulted in many Jews leaving Russia,

many of them coming to America. At least 2,000,000

Jews left Russia during this period.

Into this picture now enters Baron Von Hirsh a

German Jew. Von Hirsh was a brilliant man who

accumulated one of the largest fortunes in the world.

Around the time that the Russian pogroms were started,

he decided to use his fortune to help the unfortunate

Jews of Russia. He donated huge sums of money to

resettle Jews in various countries of the world, including

America.

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The Alliance Israélite Universalle, a Paris-

based international Jewish Organization was founded

in 1860 by the French statesman Adolphe Cremieux to

safeguard the human rights of Jews around the world.

The organization promoted the ideals of Jewish self-

defense and self-sufficiency through education and

professional development. Further, the Jews had not

been able to own their own land in many cases and

there was a viewpoint that all Jews were tradesmen or

money lenders. To counter that image of Jews, some

Jewish thinkers and community leaders proclaimed

that recent Jewish immigrants ought "to become tillers

of the soil” and thus shake off the impression that they

were petty mercenaries living upon the toil of others.

In 1880, Moses Bayuk, came to Norma, New

Jersey from the Russian Empire. The Hebrew Emi-

grant Aid Society granted Bayuk a parcel of land near

the Maurice River adjacent to the Norma train station.

His property was the beginning of the Alliance Colo-

ny.

Consistent with the “return to the soil” concept of the

groups funding the immigrants, the early settlers were

given 40 acres of land per family on land that needed

to be cleared before it could be farmed. The immigrant

colony members had little knowledge of agriculture

and so had difficulty farming the sandy south Jersey

soil. Fortunately, they did receive help and training

from their neighbors. But, making a living in this man-

ner was still difficult so they turned to manufacturing

as a source of income and a clothing factory was estab-

lished. They also focused on education, building sever-

al well recognized schools as well as four synagogues,

and finally a Jewish cemetery. Other Jewish settle-

ments such as Carmel, Rosenhayn, Norma, Brotman-

ville, and Woodbine followed similar paths.

Around the same

time that this was happening, Charles K. Landis was

making a strenuous effort to sell his land and had de-

cided that Italians were the ones to attract. Unlike the

Jews that had little experience in farming, the vast ma-

jority of Italians were farmers that had become accus-

tomed to farming the rocky soil of Italy. They literally

could grown a crop on a cement side walk, so they

were able to make farming a success on the south Jer-

sey soil. Hence, they came and prospered and created

one of, if not the, largest Italian agricultural area of

this country. While this was going on, the Jews were

creating their farming and manufacturing centers of the

area around Vineland. History, luck and fate had

thrown these two immigrant groups together. How

would they interact with each other?? Well, since this

is a history publication, let’s go back to Italy and see

how the Jews and Italians dealt with each other in the

past. When the king and queen of Spain back

in 1492 decided to get rid of the Jews, many of them

went to Venice. There were so many of them, the

“poor Venetians” had to come up with some idea of

where to put them. They decided that they would have

them live on the island of Ghetto, an abandoned iron

working area. All the Jews of Venice were forced to

give up their property and move to that Island. They

were severely restricted in what work they could per-

form, and had to return to their ghetto island at night.

The Pope was so impressed with this wonderful idea

that had been created by the Venetians, that he created

a Jewish area in Rome that became known as a

“Ghetto.” This too was under lock and key. Soon

Ghettos sprung up all over Europe in imitation of the

Italians. But, when the newly formed Italian nation

conquered Rome in 1870, the Italian government had

absolutely no interest in keeping the Jews confined to a

Ghetto. Also, the Pope no

long controlled the city of

Rome which was now un-

der secular control, rather

than religious. The Jews

found that the gates to the

Roman Ghetto were no

longer locked at night and

they could come and go as

they pleased. Further, the

Italians themselves

Baron Von Hirsch

Page 2

Page 3 FALL 2015, VOLUME 18 ISSUE 3

never did make any effort to isolate the Jews and could

care less what they did or did not do. The Italian Jews

were basically accepted as Italians, so much so that when

Mussolini (who attempted to imitate his wonderful fellow

dictator Hitler) passed restrictive laws against the Jews,

the Italians in general did not see much reason to support

them. In fact, they often resisted the attempts of the Fas-

cists and Nazis when they attempted to round up Jews. In

one Italian town that had been marked for the deportation

of Jews, the Italians of the town gave the Jews guns, sent

them up into the mountains to hide and told them to shoot

to kill if needed. (But, they made them promise to return

the guns when the threat was over so “they would not get

in trouble with the Fascists.”)

With this attitude, then, the mixture of Jews and

Italians in Vineland was literally one made in heaven.

They really had no problem coexisting. Another interest-

ing thing was that Italians had a tendency to divide all

people as either Italians or Americans (known as Meri-

can). So, if you were not Italian, you were “Merican” and

that included all races, religions, and nationalities. In this

sense, the Jews were just another of the many varieties of

Americans.

As time passed and the immigrants settled down to

becoming Americans, many of them gravitated to central

Vineland where stores and businesses were started by

both groups.

By the time of the second world war, Vineland

had become the shopping center of south Jersey. People

came for miles around to shop in the many stores on Lan-

dis Ave. Vineland had also become the egg capital of

America, and the farmer’s market was about as successful

as one could be on the east coast.

Many people lament the fact that Landis Ave. has

changed and is no longer the jewel of this area. But how

many realize that so many of the stores long gone were

Jewish?? Stop and think: Morvay’s Market, Brainan’s

Fur Store, Bernies’s Army and Navy Store, Mennie’s;

Tichner’s Auto Parts; B & O’s deli, Bardfeld’s Women’s

Clothes; Blom’s Department Store; Ware’s Van and Stor-

age Company; Jacob Rubinoff feed store; Silverman’s

Clothing; Kotok’s Hardware Store; and Zukerman’s Gro-

cer Store, just to mention a few.

The Russian empire prevented the Jews from own-

ing land. So, even though the emphasis on our local Jew-

ish immigrants was on returning to the soil, their drive to

excel, their great desire for education, and their long tradi-

tion of trading led many of the local Jews to migrate to

Vineland and start very successful businesses. They were

outnumbered by the early New Englanders and the Ital-

ians, but they made their presence felt in many ways.

But nothing lasts forever, and the situation in

Vineland gradually changed. No longer could the small

stores compete with the national chain stores. Why walk

down Landis Ave. from one small store to another when

you can go to Walmart and buy anything you need from

ice cream to roundup and at a cheaper price? Many of the

Jews have left our area and with the passing of time. their

profound influence on making Vineland what it was “in

the good old days” has been forgotten.

But to the Jewish heritage of Vineland - לום !Shalom ש

Frank De Maio, M.D. (not Jewish)

Getting Ready to Leave Russia

Alliance Memorial to 6,000,000 Jews Killed by the

Nazis

Page 3

d Page 4

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FALL 2015, VOLUME 18, ISSUE 3

I have saved the best for last. Now that you

know the history of the Jews of Vineland, I

want to quote from a book that was written by

a brilliant lady on the local settlements. In-

cluded in the book is thanks to Mr. Greenblatt

and Mr. Brotman of Vineland who helped pro-

vide information on the subject.

“The colonies are quiet now. Farms

once owned and worked by the Jewish colo-

nist have passed into different hands. Those

few still held by colony descendants are

leased to others to farm. Where factories

once employed Jewish workers, there are only

open fields. Most of the synagogues are gone:

one has been converted into a Baptist church.

Most passer-by probably never realize that the

southern New Jersey communities of Alli-

ance, Brotmanville, Norma, Carmel and

Rosenhayn were once active Jewish colonies,

the longest lasting and largest of the settle-

ment experiments undertaken by Russian

Jewish immigrants in America during the last

nineteenth century.

If the visitor looks closely, sign of the

former colonies are evident. The first clues

are the street names, which read like a whos’

who of New York Jewish society form the

1880: Schiff Avenue, Isaacs Avenue, Henry

Avenue, Eppinger Avenue. Then, set back

from the road, the Tiphereth Israel syna-

gogue still stands,

and is used by a

small congregation

annually on the

High Holidays. The

most vivid evidence

of the existence of

this once vital com-

munity is the large

Jewish cemetery,

still used and well

maintained and ded-

icated to the first

colonists who migrated from Russia to the

woodlands of South Jersey and on May 9,

1882, founded Alliance, the first Jewish farm

colony in the United States.”

Despite this tangible evidence, many

find it difficult to imagine Jewish agricultural

colonies. The idea of a Jewish farm colony

seems, at first, an anomaly. Locked into non-

agricultural economic roles in Europe for the

centuries preceding emancipation, Jews

emerged from the ghetto just as the occupa-

tions linked to modern capitalist economies

began to expand.”

That’s it folks. If you want more, you need to

buy the book!!!

Frank De Maio, M.D.

www.historicvineland.org/