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"If I am not myself, who will be for me? If I am only myself, what am I? If not now, when? Rabbi Hilal, Mishnah
From the 1930's to the 1950's, the Chicago Jews relocated their residences to the northern part of the city. They especially moved to Rogers Park and Skokie. In 1969, West Rogers Park and suburban Skokie became the largest Jewish communities, each with a Jewish population of 50,000 and they constituted about 70% of the total population of the area. To a considerable extent, the development of these new communities with religious, educational, cultural, and social service facilities was the result of a conscious effort to perpetuate Jewish group cohesion. Community leaders held the opinion that a modicum of Jewish education and voluntary segregation in a high-status residential area would forestall assimilation.
Today, West Rogers Park is a unique neighborhood, with every major Jewish movements. In any Shabbat, it is easy to see Jews, some of them with their traditional clothes, walking on the streets with their families. When I was taking the photos of the Temple Menorah on North California Ave. to include in this website, I witnessed a skeptical Jew coming by me and asking me why I was taking the photos. Later on, when I told him that I was doing a final project for school, "This is a free country. You can take the pictures," he said.
Throughout the years, the Rogers Park Jews were divided into three different groups neither of whom opposed the ideas of the each other. This seperation resulted in the multitudeness of the Synagogues, ideas and the communities without threataning the unity. Therefore, in this section, you will find the representatives of different approaches towards Judaism, which at the same time reflects that even the communities of a diverse neighborhood are diverse among themselves.