The history of the Jews in Illinois dates back to 1793, when John Hays, the region's first postmaster, settled in Cahokia from his native New York.
The most prominent Jew in Illinois' early days was Abraham Jonas (politician), who moved to Quincy from Cincinnati in 1838.
Samuel Noah, the first Jewish graduate of West Point, who taught school at Mount Pulaski, Illinois in the late 1840s.
Among the early arrivals was Henry Meyer, an agent of a Jewish colonization society formed in New York in 1842.
Outside of Chicago, there are eight congregations in seven cities, and numerous dispersed Jews that are members of the Jewish Federation of Southern Illinois.