Carmel, A Local History

In the early 1800s, a gentleman by the name of Jonathan Bowen and his wife, Rosanna, originally from Bridgeton, settled an area of Deerfield Township near where the road going from Philadelphia to Cape May intersected the road going from Bridgeton to South Vineland. At the time, the area was known as Beaver Dam. There was little there other than a traveler’s rest, an inn known as the Halfway House.

Mr. Bowen farmed and conducted a ship chandler business until his death in 1852, at which time the property was sold by his widow to William Miller, who attempted to settle Beaver Dam with German immigrants.

Miller’s experiment ended in failure, and, in 1892, he sold most of the land and houses to Michael Heilprin, a Jewish philanthropist from New York, and his associates, to settle newly arriving Russian Jews.

In 1883, seventeen Russian Jewish families came to Beaver Dam, whose name the new arrivals changed to Carmel, an obvious reference to Mount Carmel in Samaria, in what is now the modern State of Israel.

Life in Carmel was difficult. There was little to sustain an agricultural village through the long winters. Some settlers were unable to bear the hardships and moved away, as others arrived to take their place. These later arrivals helped to rejuvenate the settlement effort with skills brought from Europe. Few were farmers, but other skills, such as the needle trade, contributed a great deal to strengthening the community.

One of those with agricultural know-how was my grandfather, Hyman April, who migrated to the area by way of the port of Gloucester, New Jersey, in 1903. He had managed the apple orchards of a Russian countess near Kiev before coming to America.

By 1889, there were nearly three hundred Jews in Carmel, but life was hard in the wilderness of southern New Jersey, and when Mr. Heilprin passed away, so did his generous financial support. New help arrived in the form of the Baron de Hirsch Fund in New York, along with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society of Philadelphia. These two organizations supported the fledgling colony until it became more self-sufficient. A number of small cottage industries developed, helping to augment agricultural income. A few small sewing factories, a cigar factory, and a button factory sprang up, and at least half of their employees were women and children.

Although the early settlers had not constructed a synagogue, a small building owned by Mr. Miller a short distance from Irving Avenue, near the school, was used for this purpose. A Chevra Kadish, or burial society, was established in 1889, and, within a year, it had carried out a few burials in Chesed Shel Emeth cemetery; still in use today.

The settlers recognized the importance of Jewish education, even in those difficult times, and, in September 1892, they established the Talmud Torah and Hebrew Education Society of Carmel.

An influx of Romanian Jews in 1893 provided a healthy addition to the growing Jewish population of the colony. The Jewish Agricultural Aid Society, a subsidiary of the Baron de Hirsch Fund, provided mortgages, rather than outright grants to the new arrivals. The new thinking of the fund managers was that a vested interest in success would create greater stability.

Since Carmel’s Jewish community was now comprised of people of different backgrounds, polarization developed. The earliest settlers from Russia had established Chesed Shel Emeth cemetery and had resided in the community longer. The newer group, differing in both tradition and religious ritual, created a second cemetery of their own on adjacent land. Today, Chesed Shel Emeth is a merger of both cemeteries.

By 1900, both groups, under the leadership of Samuel Gelb, came together to build a community center and synagogue. Columbia Hall, the community center next door to present-day Temple Beth Hillel, was completed in 1903, but, due to lack of funds and the inability of the two factions to work together, construction on the synagogue building was halted. Work resumed briefly again in 1904, but the same problems forced another stoppage.

In 1906, the two groups, Agudath Achim of Carmel and the Independent Order of Beth Abraham, Lodge 216, agreed to form a completely new congregation, together. They elected a board of directors comprised of former officers of both groups.

Henry Dix, a factory owner, gave the new group both a mortgage and a $500 donation. To put the size of Dix’s donation into perspective, at the time my grandfather was earning $5 a month as a part-time custodian at Carmel School, and the average cost of a home in Carmel was $800. The new group elected Isaac Rosen president, and, in gratitude to Henry Dix, whose Hebrew name was Hillel, named the new congregation Beth Hillel.

Constructed of brick, a statement of permanence even today, the interior of the synagogue was very much the same as it appears today, except for a wood ceiling that matched the wainscoting and the rail of the Mechitzah the gallery area where [the women sat]. Gas was used for illumination at first, but, when electricity came to Carmel, electric light fixtures were installed in the synagogue. There was no indoor plumbing, and I can remember watching the construction of the bathroom in the anteroom. It was a number of years later, however, until the privies were finally removed. The present seating was purchased from Beth Abraham synagogue, located on Laurel Street in Bridgeton when they modernized their sanctuary. Ben Solof, son of Barnett Solof, Congregation Beth Hillel’s long-serving gabbai, remembers helping to move the seats on an April Orchards’ truck. The padding was added in 1985. Prior to these seats being installed, there were pews with tall ends and doors for each row. In the old days, there was a row of seats on the eastern wall, facing the congregation, as well as a row of seats in front of the bimah. There was a large table on the floor in front of that row of seats from where the Torah was read, and a small podium in front of the Aron ha-Kodesh for the leader of the service; who faced the Ark, not the congregation. The Ark was constructed by William Pollock, and the beautiful carvings on either side and atop it were crafted by David Moscovitz. The entire Ark was financed by the Ladies Aid Society, an auxiliary women’s organization, which, over the years, had raised money for charitable projects, made lodging arrangements for Shabbat visitors, and worked for the general good of the congregation and community. Within the Aron ha-Kodesh were two Torahs, one brought by each of the two founding groups. The synagogue housed a fine library of religious books, written in Hebrew, displayed in cabinets with glass doors. The cabinets, which covered the rear wall between double swinging doors.s and the southern wall, were moved upstairs in 1986 to become part of the wall of the Rabbi’s office. The best of the volumes and the two Torahs were stolen a few years before.

A formal dedication of the synagogue building was held on August 28, 1908. Following the service, the celebration continued next door at Columbia Hall, which, by the way, was also home to the town library. That library was still in active use into the 1950s. I remember working three days a week as an assistant to Rita Popelsky, who was the last official librarian. The building also had classrooms for the Cheder, or Hebrew School, while some of the classes were held in the second-floor room of the synagogue, where the stairway balcony and Rabbi’s office are today. When the synagogue was first built, the fact that the congregation had its own self-contained Talmud Torah was a cutting-edge concept.

Congregation Beth Hillel remained strong through the 1910s, with a population of nearly 600 Jews, but World War I, changes in industry and the economy, the availability of higher education, better transportation and communication, and other factors all played a part in the slow, steady decline in Carmel’s population. There were some small gains in the ’20s and late ’40s as Jews escaped persecution and extermination in Europe.

My mother, Faye [April] Schwed, is the youngest and only surviving of the ten April children. She was born, prematurely, at the April home on Miller Avenue on July 29, 1912, after her mother was injured in a tornado that destroyed their home. After her mother died, when my mother was only seven years old, her father remarried. His new wife mistreated my mother, who moved to Millville to live with her sister, Gussie, and her husband Matt. In 1946, with two children and one on the way, she and my father Frank, moved back to Carmel, directly across the street from the synagogue.

During the 1940s, Carmel was a bustling community. There were tract farms, poultry farms, my uncle’s apple and peach orchards, two grocery stores, a service station, a poultry supply shop, a butcher shop, a firehall, and even a small hotel, Mrs. Zeffin’s, across the street.

The congregation easily supported a full-time rabbi, also supplying him with a house for his family. There were also opportunities for the rabbi to supplement his income serving as the community shochet, and not just for chickens, but also for cattle for the local butcher.

There were plenty of Jewish children to populate the Talmud Torah, and the afterschool Hebrew school was so popular that at least one Christian boy, Frank Mathers, attended, just to be with his friends!

Beth Hillel was an Orthodox congregation, and, although the Jews of Carmel were more liberl in their practice than their forebears, the service was still conducted in traditional Orthodox style.

My Bar Mitzvah, in October 1955, was the first ever at Beth Hillel to include a catered affair, a luncheon in Columbia Hall, following services. There was no air conditioning back then, and the windows were kept open and screens kept most of [the bugs out. Successive celebrations grew bigger and fancier, too big for the old hall.

On August 31, 1958, fifty years, almost to the day, from the original dedication, a grand celebration was held to commemorate the synagogue’s 50th Anniversary and the 75th Anniversary of the town of Carmel.

A large stage was erected behind the building in the grove of trees that stood where the parking lot is now located. There were speeches, rabbinic and political dignitaries, music, and lots of food. The celebration was really a last hoorah, for the Jewish population continued to decline.

It eventually became impossible to attract or support a rabbi with a family. By the 1960s, the congregation was led by a succession of elderly or unmarried rabbis. Attendance at services dropped so that it was often difficult to make a minyan.

Through the forties, fifties, and into the sixties my uncle, Morris April, and his wife Lillian assumed stewardship of Beth Hillel. My uncle served as president and my aunt made sure everything ran smoothly. After my Uncle Morris passed away, however, my Aunt Lil asked my father to look after the synagogue. Frank Schwer took the job very seriously. He looked after the synagogue, the rabbi’s house, and the cemetery. He procured cantors and rabbis to conduct High Holy Day services, and on a couple of occasions, he even borrowed a camping trailer from a neighbor, Sol Specter, so the visiting rabbi would have a place to stay close to the synagogue.

I became board secretary of Beth Hillel in 1973, and we advertised in local papers that we were to have “Conservative” High Holy Day services, free of charge, in the hole of drawing some interested families, but to no avail. Even with occasional help from non-members, there were times when it was impossible to gather a minyan for a yahrzeit. It became clear that there would soon be a danger of not having enough people to support any kind of holiday service. Coincidentally, little Beth Israel synagogue on Garton Road in Rosenhayn was experiencing similar difficulties. It was the conversations between Samuel Ostroff, Morris’ father, and my father that initiated efforts where Morris Ostroff and a few men from Garton Road would
come to Carmel for joint services.

In 1982, Jewish Federation of Cumberland County helped us reach out to members of the Jewish community who might be interested in free seating for the holidays in a “Conservative” setting, netting us two new families who came to “check us out”.

In the meantime, our children were attending the autonomous Alternative Hebrew School, where Geri and I met several other young families with interests similar to our own. We began meeting for breakfast on Sunday mornings, while the children were in school. This interaction gave rise to the desire for our own congregation. The final six or seven families at Congregation Beth Hillel met and decided that to save the synagogue they would have to agree to a “changing of the guard”.

By this time, my aunt, Lillian April, and cousin, Dr. Miriam April, were successful in having the synagogue building added to the National Register of Historic Places, a distinction we are immensely proud of.

We engineered an exchange of power; the original congregation held an election; named me president, Zane Osborn, vice-president, Barbara Kornbluh, secretary, and Mark Skilowitz, treasurer. The new Board of Directors pushed for a new name and new direction for the· synagogue.

The congregation became Temple Beth Hillel of Carmel, careful to differentiate itself from Beth Hillel of Millville, and we hired Cantor David Kember of Bridgeton to lead our services and to serve as interim spiritual leader. The new congregation attracted a number of new members, some unaffiliated and some looking for a new spiritual home.

Columbia Hall and the rabbi’s house were sold to generate revenue, used to drill a new well, put new shingles on the leaking roof, upgrade the electrical system, and make other necessary repairs and improvements.

Samuel Ostroff and the remaining members of Garton Road decided to give us a try. They brought their Torahs over to Carmel, and on December 13, 1985, a Torah Dedication took place. Barbara Kornbluh, who grew up in Margate and knew Rabbi Seymour Rosen, a Reform rabbi, asked the good rabbi to address us and explain the Reform movement. We liked Rabbi Rosen’s approach, but we were committed to considering all options.

After meeting with the Reconstructionist movement, we decided to meet with the Union of American Hebrew Congregations [UAHC]. Rabbi Rosen put us in touch with UAHC’s regional director, Rabbi Richard Address.

We liked what Rabbi Address had to say, and he left promising to find us a part-time Reform rabbi. After several weeks of fruitless searching, Rabbi Address called me to propose he serve as our interim rabbi. We were delighted. His interim tenure lasted 14 years.

When Cantor Kember retired in 1986, we hired Cantor Marlena Shapiro to provide liturgical music. Marlena has changed her surname to Taenzer, but she, by many estimates, is still the “glue” that holds us together. Rabbi Address brought Temple Beth Hillel into the UAHC family, legitimizing us as a Reform congregation and our services have evolved into a traditional form of Reform Judaism. Our services are now every other week, and we extend an open invitation to the community to worship with us some Friday nights and see what Temple Beth Hillel Beth Abraham is today.