Rosenhayn, NJ

Rosenhayn is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Deerfield Township, in Cumberland County's farming country. It began as a Jewish agricultural colony organized with help from the Baron de Hirsch movement and the Hebrew Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society, drawing immigrants from western Russia. The small Or Yisroel synagogue, built around 1898, is the place's defining survivor: a one-room clapboard building that still marks the settlement's early religious and farm history. Rosenhayn once had a clothing factory, brick yard, and other small industries, while a religious school served the colony's children. Students today are assigned to Deerfield Township and Cumberland Regional school districts. Rosenhayn is a South Jersey place where the old farm colony, the synagogue, and the surrounding township carry the story alongside the municipal boundary.