To wrap up its celebrations of Jewish American Heritage Month, the township library held an event on the history of the Jewish community in Camden County.
Ruth Bogatz was the featured speaker for the talk, “Growth of the Camden County Jewish Community.” She is a lifelong resident of the county who was born at Cooper Hospital in the mid 1930s.
“If you’re looking for dates and you know, a chronological history, you don’t get that from me,” Bogatz said. “I consider myself a social historian.”
She started off the talk by noting that the Jewish communities of Camden, Gloucester, Burlington and Salem counties are her passion, then recited a song her friend, Irving Epstein, wrote about Camden.
“We left our hearts in Camden,” it goes. “Our happy years were jammed in, with memories good and sweet.”
Bogatz went on to describe how the early years of Jews in Camden City in the 1880s saw a community small in number and average in means, but able to build a strong foundation for the much larger and stronger Jewish community that now exists in the region.
“It would be impossible for me to give you a complete history of the Jews of Camden or to mention everyone who contributed to it in the time given to me,” Bogatz acknowledged. “The names I mentioned are few and only used as markers.”
She described how many of the early members of the Jewish community started businesses, making and selling everything from steel pens to shoes, and running a taproom and bathhouse. She recounted how many of them moved to Camden from various farming settlements around South Jersey to find opportunity and employment.
“Camden, the city of my birth, now one of the poorest cities in the nation, was a wonderful place,” Bogatz recalled.
She also talked about the building of the first synagogues in the city in the early 20th century.
“In an early map of the city, that location is marked by the words ‘Jewish church,’” she pointed out.
By the 1920s, there were 2,000 Jews in Camden out of a population of 118,000, with three synagogues between them. Bogatz also spoke of the Jewish Federation in the region at the time, its role in the community and the city’s first rabbis.
“When the war ended, the community gathered to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice and to honor those who had served,” she emphasized. “They rallied to aid the displaced persons who survived the Holocaust and 24 families were welcomed to begin new lives in Camden.”
Bogatz described the celebrations in the city’s streets when Israel was declared a new nation in 1948, with 450 students from the Beth El Hebrew school waving the flag. She talked about the Jewish community center that opened in 1956 with a nursery school, athletic facilities, meeting spaces and a swimming pool.
Members of the library audience recounted their own memories and tales of the history Bogatz spoke about, including Larry Miller, a past president of the Sons of Israel organization.
“Everything you said was pure nostalgia …” he told Bogatz. “I distinctly remember the corner of Kaighn Avenue and Broadway. And I can still name old stores, Jewish stores.”
Sabrina Spector, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Southern New Jersey, helped organize the talk.
“I think it was wonderful for our community to hear about our roots and our foundation to hear about the contributions we’ve made to the community,” she noted, “and how much we’ve grown into what we are today.”
