[2] At this time, West Rogers Park was - and continues to be - the largest Jewish community within the city of Chicago.
[6] Many early Jewish immigrants worked as peddlers before establishing small stores, some of which grew into significant businesses.
These Eastern European Jews largely settled in the Maxwell Street area on Chicago's Near West Side, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods at the time.
Irving Cutler noted that this community recreated elements of the Old World shtetl, with its numerous Jewish institutions and culture.
[1] Eastern European and German Jewish communities in Chicago remained largely separate until the mid-20th century due to differing cultural and religious practices.
Lakefront neighborhoods on the North Side including Lakeview, Rogers Park, and Uptown also attracted Eastern European Jews.
Jewish communities and synagogues were established in many of these cities, including Waukegan, Maywood, Chicago Heights, Joliet, Elgin, and Aurora, as well as Hammond and Gary in Northwest Indiana.
[8] Eastern European Jews made up 80% of the city's Jewish population, which accounted for 8% of Chicago's total residents at the time.
[1][8] Starting after World War II, wide-scale suburbanization of the Chicago-area Jewish community began, influenced by white flight, the availability of affordable vacant land, and the opening of the interstate highways.
In the post-World War I era, a group of wealthy Jews, primarily descendants of German immigrants, settled in Chicago's exclusive North Shore suburbs, including Glencoe and Highland Park.
While the North Shore suburbs increasingly became home to wealthy Jewish families, some, especially Kenilworth and Lake Forest, barred Jews from moving in.
This shift was sparked by the development of Park Forest, Illinois, and sprawled into the established Jewish community in nearby Chicago Heights.
[13] By 1949, Park Forest was home to a chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women, a B'nai B'rith lodge, and a Hebrew school.
A small, shrinking, mostly elderly community remained in Albany Park, which only a few decades before had been one of the largest Jewish neighborhoods in the Midwest.
Significant Jewish populations were found in the Calumet Region and in northern and northwestern suburbs, including Des Plaines, Evanston, Glenview, Morton Grove, Niles, Northbrook, Wheeling, and Wilmette.
As younger families moved to the Far Northwest Suburbs, the suburban Jewish population became more geographically dispersed, complicating the provision of Jewish-oriented services.
[12] Cutler observed a decline in Skokie's Jewish population, attributing it to the children of post-World War II households moving to other suburbs.
[15] In 2020 there are reported to be 319,600 Jewish people living in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will Counties—about 3.8% of the metro population.
[4] These growth rates were the highest among Chicagoland's metropolitan divisions, suggesting a shift in the urban-suburban population balance back toward the city.
Additionally, approximately 10% of the population on Chicago's North Side and in the nearby northern and northwestern suburbs are Jewish.
Universities include: Primary and secondary schools: Chicago's first synagogue, Kehilath Anshe Mayriv (KAM), was established in 1847 at the intersection of Lake and Wells in The Loop by German Jewish immigrants.
In 1852, a group of 20 Polish Jews, dissatisfied with KAM's practices, founded Kehilath B'nai Sholom, a congregation with a more Orthodox orientation.
In the same year, the following further-out suburbs with newer Jewish settlement had synagogues: Buffalo Grove, Des Plaines (now closed), Hoffman Estates, Vernon Hills, and Wheeling.