Am Oylom

Am Oylom (Heb. ‘Am ‘olam, “eternal people”) was a communal colonization movement founded in Odessa in 1881 in reaction to the pogroms in the Russian Empire. Its founders, Mani Bakal and Moses Herder, believed that Russian Jews should emigrate to the United States—a democracy, unlike Ottoman Palestine—and build communal agricultural colonies there. Am Oylom had active branches throughout the Pale of Settlement; its members were artisans, students, and young intellectuals who were inspired by the Russian radical settlement movement and communal projects of the 1870s. Between 1882 and 1883, several groups came to the United States. Many of them disbanded soon thereafter, remaining in New York but abandoning their utopian ideas. Only four settlements were established. The group of thirty-two families led by Herman Rosenthal built a colony in Louisiana that was soon destroyed in a flood. In 1882, the colonies Crémieux and Bethlehem of Judea appeared in South Dakota. Both settlements existed until 1885. Another group of Am Oylom members, led by the socialist Pavel Kaplan, established the New Odessa colony in Oregon in 1882, which ceased to exist in 1887.