Alliance, New Jersey
The Alliance Colony was a Jewish agricultural community that was founded on May 10, 1882, in Pittsgrove Township, in Salem County, New Jersey, United States. It was named after the Alliance Israélite Universelle of Paris and was funded by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society of New York and Philadelphia and The Baron De Hirsch Fund.
Following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, numerous pogroms targeting Russian Jews prompted many families to move emigrate. Many began their lives in America in tenements on Manhattan's Lower East Side. As the numbers of Jewish people in America increased there was a strong desire to leave the confinement and crowded conditions in the cities. Some Jewish thinkers and community leaders proclaimed that recent Jewish immigrants ought "to become tillers of the soil and thus shake off the accusation that we were petty mercenaries living upon the toil of others." They settled in communities across the country, but many wished to continue living in predominately Jewish areas. These immigrants recognized that self-sufficiency would be paramount to their survival, which led them into agriculture. The leader of Alliance Colony, Moses Bayuk (Moshe Bajuk), came to Norma, New Jersey from the Russian Empire in 1880. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society granted Bayuk a parcel of land near the Maurice River adjacent to the Norma train station. His property was the beginning of Alliance Colony. Alliance was founded by a core group of 25 settlers but many more followed and, by the end of the first summer, there were 60-70 families living in the colony.
The land that was settled consisted of 40 acres (160,000 m2) per family on farmland that needed to be cleared and farmed. The immigrant colony members had little knowledge of agriculture and had difficulty farming the sandy South Jersey soil but received training from their neighbors. The HIAS paid workers weekly during the period in which land was cleared. Initially, Alliance was also supported by local politicians who arranged for 1,000+ army tents for the community for shelter until permanent housing could be built.
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