Forward
The Tapestry of Jewish Chicago
Step into the vibrant mosaic of Chicago’s Jewish history—a story that begins with Bavarian peddlers and blossoms into a legacy of resilience, reinvention, and cultural brilliance. From the first Yom Kippur service in 1845 to the bustling Maxwell Street Market, Jewish Chicagoans have shaped the city’s soul through enterprise, activism, and faith.
This section traces the evolution of Jewish life across neighborhoods and generations: the rise of North Lawndale as a powerhouse of Orthodox institutions, the intellectual ferment of Hyde Park, and the enduring heartbeat of West Rogers Park. It explores how German and Eastern European Jews built parallel worlds—sometimes in tension, often in tandem—laying foundations for synagogues, hospitals, and social movements that still echo today.
You’ll meet garment workers turned union leaders, philanthropists like Julius Rosenwald who reimagined education and civil rights, and communities that weathered white flight, suburbanization, and cultural shifts with remarkable tenacity. Whether it’s the architectural legacy of Jewish modernists or the spirited debates between Reform and Orthodox congregations, every thread in this narrative invites reflection and awe.
So, dear reader, prepare to be immersed. This isn’t just a chronicle of migration and settlement—it’s a celebration of how Jewish Chicago helped define the city’s character, and how its story continues to unfold in every corner from Devon Avenue to the North Shore.
So, let’s begin.
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Meyer Levinson is standing in front of his butcher shop at 326 Maxwell Street in Chicago. Circa 1903. Today, this address would place the butcher shop just west of Campus Parkway, in the athletic field of the University of Illinois at Chicago campus.
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Jews came to Chicago from virtually every country in Europe and the Middle East, but especially from Germany and Eastern Europe. Unlike most other immigrant groups, Jews left the Old Country with no thoughts of ever returning to lands where so many had experienced poverty, discrimination, and even sporadic massacres.
Jews began trickling into Chicago shortly after the town was incorporated in 1833.
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Chicago was Incorporated as a town on August 12, 1833, and Incorporated as a city on March 4, 1837.
A century later, Chicago's 270,000 Jews (about 9 percent of the city's population) were outnumbered only in New York and Warsaw. By the end of the twentieth century, only about 30 percent of Jewish people remained within city limits.
Chicago's first permanent Jewish settlers arrived in the mid-1830s from Central Europe, mainly from the German states. A few lived briefly in eastern cities before being attracted to the burgeoning city of Chicago. These early settlers included Henry Horner, whose grandson of the same name would become the first Jewish governor of Illinois.
Many of these settlers started as street peddlers with packs on their backs and later opened small stores downtown. From these humble beginnings, they later established such companies as Florsheim, Spiegel, Alden's, Mandel Brothers, Albert Pick & Co., A. G. Becker, Brunswick, Inland Steel, Kuppenheimer, and Hart, Schaffner & Marx.
Chicago's first synagogue, Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv Synagogue (KAM), was founded at the corner of Lake and Wells in 1847 by a group of Jewish immigrants from the same general region of Germany.
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The old Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv Synagogue, Chicago, Illinois.
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By 1852, about 20 Polish Jews had become discontented enough to break off from KAM and founded Chicago's second congregation, Kehilath B'nai Sholom, a more Orthodox congregation than the older KAM. In 1861, the second significant secession from KAM occurred. This splinter group, led by Rabbi Bernhard Felsenthal, formed the Sinai Reform Congregation, which met in a church located near the corner of Monroe and LaSalle Streets.
In 1859, the United Hebrew Relief Association (UHRA) was founded by approximately 15 Jewish organizations, including several B'nai B'rith lodges and various Jewish women's organizations.
After the 1871 fire, Jews moved out of the downtown area, primarily southward, eventually settling in the fashionable lakefront communities of Kenwood, Hyde Park, and South Shore. Wherever they settled, they established needed institutions, including Michael Reese Hospital, the Drexel Home (for aged Jews), and the social and civic Standard Club.
In the late 1870s, Eastern European Jews, primarily from Russian and Polish regions, began arriving in Chicago in large numbers. They came mainly from shtetlach (small rural villages or towns), and by 1930, they constituted over 80 percent of Chicago's Jewish population. They initially settled in one of the poorest areas of the city, the Maxwell and Halsted streets area on Chicago's Near West Side.
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Maxwell Street Market, Chicago.
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Maxwell Street Market resembled a community in an Old World shtetl (a small Jewish village or town in Eastern Europe), with numerous Jewish institutions, restaurants, merchants, and about 40 synagogues. It also featured a bazaar-like outdoor market that attracted customers from the entire Chicago area. They eked out a living as peddlers, petty merchants, artisans, and factory laborers, especially in the garment industry, where many men and women became ardent members, organizers, and leaders in several progressive unions.
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Maxwell Street Market, Chicago. 1904
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The Eastern European Jews differed from the German Jews in their cultural background, language, dress, demeanor, and economic status. Until the mid-twentieth century, the two groups maintained distinct neighborhoods and institutions. Friction also arose from differing religious practices, as the Orthodox newcomers encountered a German Jewish community increasingly oriented toward Reform Judaism.
A sense of kinship, however, and the fear that poverty and the seemingly exotic culture of European Jews might provoke anti-Semitism led Chicago's German Jews (like their counterparts in other American cities) to provide a foundation upon which the newcomers could build lives as Chicagoans. These institutions included educational (Jewish Training School, opened in 1890), medical (Chicago Maternity Center, 1895), and recreational (Chicago Hebrew Institute, 1903) facilities that provided practical resources while helping to accelerate the Americanization of the new immigrants. Julius Rosenwald, a prominent business executive and philanthropist, was one of these institutions' chief organizers and a significant financial contributor.
By 1910, education and entrepreneurship had provided many Jews with a route out of the Maxwell Street area. A small number joined the German Jews on the South Side; some moved into the north lakefront communities of Lake View, Uptown, and Rogers Park; more headed northwest into Humboldt Park, Logan Square, and Albany Park. The largest number of Jews moved west into the North Lawndale area, which soon became the largest Jewish community in Chicago's history, both in terms of population and institutional presence.
By the 1930s, North Lawndale housed 60 synagogues (all but 2 Orthodox), a very active community center, the Jewish People's Institute, the Hebrew Theological College, the Douglas Library, where Golda Meir worked for a short time, and numerous Zionist, cultural, educational, fraternal, and social service organizations and institutions.
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The old Anshe Roumania Synagogue building, North Lawndale, Chicago, IL.
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After World War II, increasing prosperity and government housing benefits for returning war veterans enabled growing numbers of Chicago Jews to fulfill their desire for single-family homes. Upwardly mobile Jews started moving out of their old communities into higher-status West Rogers Park (West Ridge) on the far North Side.
By the end of the twentieth century, West Rogers Park had emerged as the largest Jewish community in the city. More than 30,000 Jews were Orthodox, and the rhythm of Orthodox life remained evident, from the daily synagogue prayer services to the numerous Orthodox institutions and the closing of Jewish stores on Devon Avenue for the Sabbath. Some of the recent 22,000 Russian Jewish immigrants also settled in the area.
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Tel-Aviv Bakery, 2944 West Devon Avenue, West Ridge Community,
West Rogers Park Neighborhood, Chicago.
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Other Jewish areas in the city included the apartment and condominium complexes paralleling the northern lake shore and a small community in the Hyde Park area.
Many Jews joined the postwar migration to suburbia. Housing discrimination had limited suburbanization in the early years, although small numbers of Jews had begun to move into some suburbs that were open to them in the early 1900s. The most concentrated movement of Jews into the suburbs followed World War II, with the removal of restrictive housing covenants and increased affluence.
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West Ridge Community, West Rogers Park Neighborhood, Chicago, Illinois.
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Approximately 70 percent of the estimated 270,000 Jews in the Chicago metropolitan area in the 1990s lived in the suburbs, compared to just 5 percent in 1950. Most were concentrated in such northern suburbs as Skokie, Lincolnwood, Glencoe, Highland Park, Northbrook, and Buffalo Grove.
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Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.#JewishThemed #JewishLife
