FALL 2015, VOLUME 18 ISSUE 3

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Fall Edition
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, lets go to more recent times.
Jews were never well accepted in Christian
areas. So, over the centuries, thousands of Jews migrated 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 Russian 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.
Continued on the next page

FALL 2015, VOLUME 18 , ISSUE 3

Baron Von Hirsch

The Alliance Isralite Universalle, a Parisbased 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 selfdefense 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 Emigrant 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 Colony.
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 manner was still difficult so they turned to manufacturing
as a source of income and a clothing factory was established. They also focused on education, building sever-

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al well recognized schools as well as four synagogues,

and finally a Jewish cemetery. Other Jewish settlements such as Carmel, Rosenhayn, Norma, Brotmanville, 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 decided that Italians were the ones to attract. Unlike the
Jews that had little experience in farming, the vast majority of Italians were farmers that had become accustomed 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 Jersey 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, lets 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 perform, 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 under 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
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FALL 2015, VOLUME 18 ISSUE 3

Getting Ready to Leave Russia

Page 3

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: Morvays Market, Brainans
Fur Store, Berniess Army and Navy Store, Mennies;
Tichners Auto Parts; B & Os deli, Bardfelds Womens
Clothes; Bloms Department Store; Wares Van and Storage Company; Jacob Rubinoff feed store; Silvermans
Clothing; Kotoks Hardware Store; and Zukermans Grocer Store, just to mention a few.
The Russian empire prevented the Jews from owning land. So, even though the emphasis on our local Jewish immigrants was on returning to the soil, their drive to
excel, their great desire for education, and their long tradition 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 Italians, 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.

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 Fascists 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 But to the Jewish heritage of Vineland - Shalom!
the guns when the threat was over so they would not get
in trouble with the Fascists.)
Frank De Maio, M.D. (not Jewish)
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 interesting thing was that Italians had a tendency to divide all
people as either Italians or Americans (known as Merican). 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 Landis Ave. Vineland had also become the egg capital of
Alliance Memorial to 6,000,000 Jews Killed by the
America, and the farmers market was about as successful
Nazis
as one could be on the east coast.

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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. Included in the book is thanks to Mr. Greenblatt
and Mr. Brotman of Vineland who helped provide information on the subject.
The colonies are quiet now. Farms
once owned and worked by the Jewish colonist 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 Alliance, Brotmanville, Norma, Carmel and
Rosenhayn were once active Jewish colonies,
the longest lasting and largest of the settlement 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 synaDO YOU WANT TO JOIN??
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BENEFACTOR $100
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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 community is the large
Jewish
cemetery,
still used and well
maintained and dedicated 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 nonagricultural economic roles in Europe for the
centuries preceding emancipation, Jews
emerged from the ghetto just as the occupations linked to modern capitalist economies
began to expand.
Thats it folks. If you want more, you need to
buy the book!!!
Frank De Maio, M.D.
Name: ______________________________
ADDRESS: _________________________
CITY :__________________ STATE: _____
ZIP:. _______ PHONE: ________________
Mail to: Friends of Historic Vineland
C/O Frank De Maio, M.D.

www.historicvineland.org/