Many Roots, One Town

The promise of independence kept unfolding long after the Revolution, because the meaning of “the people” kept expanding. Islip did not stay the town it had been in 1683, 1710, 1788, or 1790. Over generations, new families and communities entered its civic, religious, and cultural life, building institutions that made belonging visible.

One clear example is the Jewish community of Islip Town. Mollie Sebor's Girl Scout Gold Award booklet records that Jews have lived in Islip Town since at least the end of the Civil War. It traces the community through the Bay Shore United Hebrew Benevolent Cemetery Association, recognized in 1897; the purchase of the first synagogue in 1918; the founding and merging of congregations; and the later growth of Jewish institutions in Bay Shore, Brentwood, Central Islip, Oakdale, East Islip, and Sayville.

The same booklet connects Islip to twentieth-century stories of refuge. It describes Holocaust survivors coming to Islip Town after World War II, including the Adasse Farm in Central Islip as one sanctuary for sponsored survivors. Among the named survivors is Samuel Sitko, who came to Central Islip after surviving the destruction of his family at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

This kind of community history is the bridge between the Revolution and the present. The Revolution created a language of rights and belonging; later generations had to make that promise real in local life. In Islip, that happened through cemeteries, congregations, schools, houses of worship, family stories, veterans, refugees, immigrants, and neighbors who built places where their communities could be seen.

In time, this panel should hold other communities as well — Italian, Hispanic and Latino, Polish, Central American, Dutch, Irish, African American, Indigenous, and more — but only as the sources become ready. For now, the Jewish community's history stands as one strong example of how later communities became part of Islip's continuing story.

Sources

1. Mollie Sebor, “The Story of the Jewish Community of Islip Town” (Girl Scout Gold Award booklet).