Am Olam was a movement among
Russian Jews
The history of the Jews in Russia and areas historically connected with it goes back at least 1,500 years. Jews in Russia have historically constituted a large religious and ethnic diaspora; the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest pop ...
to establish agricultural colonies in America. The name means "Eternal People" and is taken from the title of an essay by
Peretz Smolenskin. It was founded in
Odessa
Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...
in 1881 by Mania Bakl (Maria Bahal) and Moses Herder, who called for the creation of
Socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
agricultural communities in the United States.
In the 1880s there were 26 colonies promoted in 8 states. Eventually the majority of Am Olam colonies were set up upon a "commercial" rather than
communalist basis.
The land was owned in common but divided into sections farmed by individuals.
See also
*
Kibbutz
A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...
, a type of cooperative agricultural community created by Zionist Jews in Palestine, later in Israel
*
Moshav
A moshav ( he, מוֹשָׁב, plural ', lit. ''settlement, village'') is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists between 1904 ...
, a similar type of community, but with less of a collective administration system than the kibbutz
* ''
Roosevelt, New Jersey: Visions of Utopia'': 1983 documentary about a 1930s socialist Jewish farming community
References
External links
Farming Communities of New Jersey at the JewishGen KehilaLinks project
Defunct Jewish organizations
Rural community development
Russian-Jewish culture in the United States
Jewish-American history
Jewish agricultural colonies
Jewish movements
Jewish socialism
1881 establishments in the Russian Empire
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