When I headed to New York for college, I knew I’d be leaving behind my peach-colored bedroom, Thursday nights watching Hill Street Blues with my parents and our cat Shayna, and the Belden Deli. But I didn’t realize that I would also be leaving behind my Jewish Chicago – and beginning a decades-long search to rediscover it.
At first I didn’t notice what I was missing, since I was focused mostly on what I was gaining. But over the years, I felt a quiet yearning that came back to me last week while sitting on a deck overlooking a cornfield in Sterling, Illinois, eating Leonard’s coffee cake with Margo Jakobs, whose son Nik is building a synagogue nearby, with a center to teach tolerance in honor of the family’s Holocaust history.
I was visiting the Jakobs family and farm as the Forward’s new editor-in-chief and chief content officer, and as the editor of a series of stories by Benyamin Cohen, who brought me to Sterling and has been writing about the family’s journey for more than a year. But I realized, in that moment, I was also there, unexpectedly, as a Chicagoan, who could taste my childhood in the sweet welcoming crumble on top of the coffee cake.
The Jewish Chicago that nurtured me wasn’t all lox boxes on Sunday mornings and Sam & Hy’s, but food was a focal point. My family didn’t go to temple regularly or observe Shabbat. We were light on ritual, heavy on schmaltz, with a container of it in the refrigerator at my grandparents’ home. But what we lacked in observance, we made up for in Yiddishkeit.
The Joys of Yiddish, Exodus, and The Jews of Chicago sat on our bookshelves just as the Forward sat in my grandparents’ home on Chicago’s West Side. The Forward’s Chicago paper was one of the larger local editions we published, with a building in my dad’s childhood neighborhood, not far from his high school, from the 1930s through early ‘50s.
After my dad and his five siblings left home, moved to the suburbs (Wilmette for us) and had children of their own, we gathered for Passover in West Rogers Park at my Aunt Shirley and Uncle Jack’s. The Seder was long, but after we avoided the gefilte fish and found the afikomen we would flee either upstairs to my cousin Suzy’s room to look at her books or downstairs to the basement to watch older cousins play pool or ping-pong until it was our turn. My Jewish Chicago was family. And a sturdy kind of faith that didn’t ask more of us than we could give.
We eventually moved from Wilmette into the city, where a very good friend – who played Golde in our high school production of Fiddler on the Roof – introduced me to a new Jewish world during Simchat Torah at Anshe Sholom on Melrose, next door to what was then the Lincoln Park/Lakeview JCC, where I went on to work as a camp counselor for several summers.
By the time I went to college, I was committed to learning Hebrew, davening regularly, and exploring a new Jewish landscape. But four years of Zabar’s and life on the Upper West Side did not make me a New York Jew. Living in North Carolina – even working at our synagogue there – didn’t make me a southern Jew. And living in Florida, with its ready supply of Vienna hot dogs, just made me miss Chicago – and long for a deli that served kishke, half-sour pickles, and hard salami.
It wasn’t until I was back in Chicago for work a dozen years ago that I began to understand what I had been missing. While I was in town for a journalism conference, my cousin Michelle took me to Mishkan Chicago for Rosh Hashanah. It was there that I found the Jewish soul of my family, the Jewish joy of my first Simchat Torah, and the Jewish heart of community.
In the years that followed, I, like so many people, explored Jewish life online. My husband and I joined Shabbat and holiday livestreams from our home in Virginia, watching services at synagogues across 35 states, including Mishkan Chicago once the pandemic made that possible. Mishkan began livestreaming weekly, and their morning minyan became a daily habit. My Jewish Chicago had come to me.
I also inched closer to it when I began talking with Jodi Rudoren and Rachel Fishman Feddersen in 2020 about joining the Forward. The more Jewish my life was becoming, the more important it felt to align my professional and personal commitments. After Oct. 7, it seemed particularly urgent. In June 2024, I became the Forward’s managing editor for audience.
There have been many moments since when I’ve felt grateful to be doing this work. One of the best bonuses has been to work alongside our Executive Editor Adam Langer (coincidentally, he’s editing this column), whose name I first knew not from the Forward, but as the author of Crossing California, one of the books that captures my Jewish Chicago best. He indulges my nostalgia – and fact-checks my memories – about the Chicago that once was. (Editor’s Note: Though Wilmette is located north of Chicago, true Chicagoans do not consider it part of the city.)
Last week, Benyamin and I and the Jakobs’ went from Sterling to Glencoe, for a public conversation with Margo and Nik about resilience, family and community. I was back in my Jewish Chicago again, and it felt like home.
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