The Alliance Colony was a Jewish agricultural community that was founded in Alliance, New Jersey on May 10, 1882. It was named after the Alliance Israélite Universelle of Paris and was funded by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society of New York and Philadelphia and The Baron De Hirsch Fund.HistoryFollowing the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, numerous pogroms targeting Russian Jews prompted many families to move to America. Many began their lives in America in tenements on Manhattan's Lower East Side. As the numbers of Jewish people in America increased there was a strong desire to leave the confinement and crowded conditions in the cities. Some Jewish thinkers and community leaders proclaimed that recent Jewish immigrants ought "to become tillers of the soil and thus shake off the accusation that we were petty mercenaries living upon the toil of others." They settled in communities across the country, but many wished to continue living in predominately Jewish areas. These immigrants recognized that self-sufficiency would be paramount to their survival, which led them into agriculture. The leader of Alliance Colony, Moses Bayuk(Moshe Bajuk), came to Norma, New Jersey from the Russian Empire in 1880. The Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society granted Bayuk a parcel of land near the Maurice River adjacent to the Norma train station. His property was the beginning of Alliance Colony. Alliance was founded by a core group of twenty-five settlers but many more followed and, by the end of the first summer, there were 60-70 families living in the colony.