Am Olam

Am Olam was a movement among Russian Jews 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 in 1881 by Mania Bakl (Maria Bahal) and Moses Herder, who called for the creation of socialist agricultural communities in the United States.

In the 1880s there were 27 colonies promoted in ten states. (Our Lives: The Chauls Family Saga, The Chauls Siblings, p. 18) 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.

The failures of Am Olam perhaps are best summed up by the expression "cultural distance". Irving Howe, in analyzing the failure of the Am Olam colonies, states: "Most important of all, the leap from a Ukrainian shtetl (small village) to Oregon or South Dakota —the cultural leap, the economic leap —was simply too great. What sheer will and purity of heart could do they did, but sheer will and purity of heart were not enough."