The Agricultural Communes of the Am Ohm

THE WESTWARD MIGRATION of East European Jewry in the closing decades of the nineteenth century brought numerous attempts to establish agricultural colonies in such widely scattered places as Palestine, Argentina, and the United States.Among these emigres was a small atypical group of intellectuals, the Am Olam, who came to the United States with the specific goal of establishing socialist farm colonies patterned on the ideas of Leo Tolstoy, Robert Owen, and Charles Fourier.The number of Am Olam colonies actually organized is not known, simply because no one gave a precise definition or kept records. 1 This study focuses on four western colonies founded by organized groups of the Am Olam, namely: the settlement on Sicily Island, Louisiana; Cremieux and Bethlehem Yehudah in Dakota Territory; and New Odessa in Oregon.Repression had long been the bitter lot of East European Jews.The mid-nineteenth century, however, was an era of social and economic progress throughout Europe.Rising industrialism created new wealth and career opportunities.The French Revolution brought a substantial measure of equality to the Jews of Western Europe.In Russia the serfs were freed during the reign of Alexander n, and a mood of hope and confidence sprang up within Russian Jewry.In the Violet and Orlando Goering live in Vermillion, South Dakota.Orlando teaches in the Department of Sociology at the University of South Dakota, and Violet is an independent scholar.1. Abraham Menes in "The Am Oylam Movement," Y1V0 Annual of Jewish Social Science 4 (1949) identifies four Am Olam colonies but does not specifically limit them to that number.Jews in American Agriculture (New York: Jewish Agricultural Society, 1954), p. 24, gives their number as about twenty-five colonies in eight states.The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (1939-43) "Colonies, Agricultural, United States," states that at least sixteen colonies were established within two or three years.8.