Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

Roosevelt was originally called Jersey Homestead.

Benjamin Brown, the founder of Jersey Homesteads, was a Russian immigrant, who had established Jewish agricultural cooperatives in the West.
In addition to founding the town, his contribution to Jewish causes include the use of his farm four miles from Roosevelt by the World Zionist Organization to train pioneers for work on the farms of Israel upon its establishment as a nation.
Several men on Brown's farm who took flying lessons at the local Robbinsville airport became the first pilots of the Israeli Air Force.
Benjamin Brown envisioned Jersey Homesteads as a model for many similar communities in which Eastern European Jewish culture and the Yiddish language could be preserved.
Albert Einstein was among the members of the Jewish community who supported the project during its difficult beginnings.