Episode 5 of a 12-part series on village housing as it relates to diversity and equity:
In the early decades of the 20th century, Jews seeking to live in Oak Park faced similar obstacles as African Americans. Housing shortages in Chicago, entrenched village antisemitism, and discriminatory policies presented critical challenges for Jewish families.
Little Jerusalem
The Jewish move to Oak Park started with migration from North Lawndale on Chicago’s West Side. There, Jews had established a rich Yiddish culture of butcher shops, movie theatres, restaurants, schools, multiple synagogues and the still existing Mt. Sinai Hospital. They thrived in the greater Lawndale area, which came to be known as “Little Jerusalem,” the home of over 100,000 Jews, 40 percent of the region’s Jewish population in the 1920s. Historian Irving Cutler tells how Jewish families coming to the West Side faced hostility from gentiles who lived there. When a Jewish family moved onto a block, as would happen later with Black migration, fairly soon the whole block became Jewish (1).
Moving to Oak Park
By the 1930s, hundreds of Jewish families lived in Oak Park. In 1933 Jewish residents formed the West Suburban Jewish Community Center, located first in Forest Park and later relocated to Oak Park at 414 Lake St. The center became the meeting place and synagogue for preserving Jewish culture. It provided space for weekly worship, education, group support and collectively considering political action.
In 1939 the center planned for a lasting house of worship, a temple that would anchor the community for generations to come. They encountered significant discrimination, which was recently and richly documented by Oak Park resident, attorney and historian Michael Zimora (2).
Antisemitism in Oak Park was individual and collective. A Jewish family purchasing a home in the ’20s faced hostile neighbors. Later they learned the house was sold to them to spite a neighbor. Around 1930, Jewish lawyer Joseph Schachner opened a law office in Oak Park. A few weeks later a burning cross was placed in front of his home — likely by local members of the Ku Klux Klan, whose mission was to discourage both Catholics and Jews from moving to Oak Park. Undeterred, Schachner became a prominent community lawyer, businessman and a leading figure at the West Suburban Jewish Center where he was its first President (3).
Village government hostility
Oak Park Jews also ran up against discriminatory village actions. By the late ’30s the center focused on raising funds to build a new synagogue or purchase an existing structure. This happened when the national American First Committee, claiming membership of 6,000 residents in the village, had an office on Lake Street. With national celebrities like aviator Charles Lindbergh and auto tycoon Henry Ford, and Republican Party support, the committee organized to prevent U.S. entry into World War II. Appealing to endemic American antisemitism, the committee’s propaganda often falsely singled out and stereotyped Jews as un-American, communists and unscrupulous bankers working to bring America into the war (4).
When the center prepared to finalize purchasing property for a new, larger synagogue and submitted plans to the village, they learned of an undisclosed village Frontage Consent Ordinance: 51 percent of residents living within 400 feet of any planned institutional structure had to approve construction. To avoid stirring up deeper antisemitic feelings, the center decided not to press a legal challenge. Instead, they opted for a building referendum, which failed to gain the necessary 51 percent approval. Eventually. in the early 1950s, the congregation gained the support of River Forest officials and built Temple Har Zion on River Forest side of North Harlem Avenue (5).
Assimilation with cultural preservation
After World War II, the Austin Temple B’ Nai Abraham, a reform congregation, looked to build a new temple in Northwest Oak Park. Fearing likely opposition, the congregation, through a “straw buyer,” purchased land on Harlem Avenue. Their doubts about acceptance in the village persisted even as the post-war years saw a wider acceptance of Jews in America. The more accepting atmosphere brought a mass exodus of Chicago Jews to the suburbs as large numbers of Jewish military veterans took advantage of the G.I. Bill’s home financing benefits and grants for college education (6).
The congregation broke ground for their Oak Park home in 1955 and laid the Temple cornerstone in 1956. Rabbi Leonard J. Mervis led Congregation B’Nai Abraham’s first services on Rosh Hashana in 1957 (7).
Today, the Oak Park and River Forest temples have thriving congregations serving Oak Park, River Forest and the western suburbs. In 2006 Jewish Oak Parkers formed the Secular Jewish Community & School to teach and celebrate Jewish history, culture, and values in a secular, humanistic context (8).
For decades now Jewish residents have been prominent members in our civic, artistic and social-justice organizations and have provided leadership at all levels of local government.
Sources available in the online version at oakpark.com
1. Irving Cutler, The Jews of Chicago: From Shtetl to Suburb, 2006.
2. Michael Zmora, http://www.chicagojewishhistory.com/media/2567/98132_CJHS-2024_Fall_Quarterly_webVersion_New.pdf
3. Ibid, Zmora.
4. H.W. Brands, America First: Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War, 2024.
5. Ibid, Zmora.
6. Hyman L. Meites, The History of Jews in Chicago, 2024.
7. History of Oak Park Temple, oakparktemple.org