This time of year in Chicago, many of us have two things on our minds.

The holidays and the brutally cold weather.

I'm Curious City producer Jason Mark, and this week we revisit some questions we answered in winter's past.

Like the time we learned how the city breaks up the winter ice on the Chicago River and even had

the chance to go on a ride along. An honest to God icebreaker.

Plus, in honor of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, we revisit a story about the history of Chicago's Jewish population and the migration pattern that took them from the crowded, impoverished tenements of Maxwell Street to the leafy suburbs of Wilmette, Skokie, and beyond.

All of that, just ahead.

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Back in 2018, we answered a question from Elias Salts. He wanted to know about the history of

Chicago's Jewish community. He wanted to know, where were the largest Jewish neighborhoods?

What were they like? And where did they go?

The answer, it turns out, tells a story about the struggle between assimilation and maintaining traditions, how economic mobility changes a community and the efforts to overcome discrimination.

The first Jews came to Chicago from Germany soon after the city was founded in the 1830s.

But the largest group of Jews came from Eastern Europe in the 1880s, and that's where this story begins.

Now, we can't give you the whole brisket, so we're going to break this down into a Latka-sized package in honor of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, which is now being celebrated around the city and around the world.

We'll follow the typical migration pattern of the Eastern European Jewish community through the lens of a single synagogue.

That synagogue is Kehila Israel Nusakh-Safarred, known by its acronym Kins.

The congregation moved three different times over the course of more than a century,

mirroring the way the community at large moved across the city.

...