Courtesy of Seth Stern
Photo by Max Salier
A family-owned poultry farm in
Vineland, New Jersey, in the
1950s people separated and started doing
things more on their own individually and
farming individually, and the sponsors
that gave the money to the colony to help
them thrive or get through the fi rst fi ve
years really had become interested more
in the type of capitalist way of farming. ...

They didn’t really care about the commu-
nal or social aspect of it,” she continued.

But the community saw a resurgence
in the 1930s when German and Austrian
Congregants of Shairit Haplaite, a shtibl established by Holocaust survivor
poultry farmers in Vineland celebrate the arrival of a new Torah soon after its
founding in the fall of 1957.

Holocaust refugees settled in the area.

Holocaust survivors followed in the years
after, thanks to the Displaced Persons
Act of 1948.

“There were roughly 500 families,
1,000 survivors,” said Seth Stern, author
of “Speaking Yiddish to Chickens” and
editor at Bloomberg Industry Group.

“The largest concentration anywhere in
the U.S. of Holocaust survivor farmers
was in South Jersey.”
The farmers of the 1940s kept chick-
ens, sometimes 3,000 chickens for a
10-acre farm, as a way to compensate for
the land’s poor farming qualities. Kosher
butcher shops abounded, and the area
was even home to a Jewish radio show.

“It was a very tight-knit community.

There was a lot of common history,
shared history,” said Steven Manders,
whose Holocaust survivor parents
owned a chicken farm in the area before
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selling it when Manders was a child.

But as the next generation of Jews
became educated and left Vineland, and
as chicken farming became increasingly
industrial, pushing small farms out of the
market, South Jersey’s Jewish farming
population shrunk once more.

“For the most part,” Stern said, “all
of the Jewish farming was gone by
the early ‘70s.”
Today, though with sparse numbers,
Jews continue to fi nd and build commu-
nity in South Jersey. Alliance Community
Reboot in Pittsgrove Township, founded
by colony member Moses Bayuk’s
great-great-grandson William Levin and
his wife Malya, help preserve Jewish
farming tradition. The Jewish Federation
of Cumberland, Gloucester & Salem
Counties cares for the area’s Holocaust
survivors. Since 2019, Stockton
University’s Alliance Heritage Center has
worked to preserve the area’s history
and curate a digital exhibit.

Thomas Kinsella, the Elizabeth and
Samuel Levin Alliance Heritage Center
director, noted the preciousness of these
stories: “ In one way, this is the American
dream.” ■
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