4.8 • 642 Ratings
🗓️ 3 August 2023
⏱️ 20 minutes
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0:00.0 | Hey, it's Jason Mark. This year, Curious City's neighborhood spotlight is on West Ridge, also known as West Rogers Park. |
0:07.7 | And one of the things that makes the neighborhood unique is its high concentration of Orthodox Jews. |
0:14.7 | Curious City listener Alice Henry grew up there and was kind of an anomaly. |
0:20.1 | She and her family are Reform Jews, a stream of Judaism |
0:23.7 | that's less strict about keeping all the traditional rules that make up Jewish life. |
0:30.0 | Now, the neighborhoods had a large Jewish population since the late 1940s, and for many decades, |
0:36.8 | you'd find the whole range of Jewish life there, |
0:40.0 | from Jewish atheists to those who adhered strictly to biblical and rabbinical law. |
0:46.0 | But over the last few decades, Jewish Westridge has become more and more observant, |
0:51.4 | more religious, and Alice wanted to know, |
0:54.9 | When in mind did Westridge become such an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood? |
0:59.3 | So this week on the podcast, we'll try to answer those questions and help you understand a little |
1:03.9 | about a community here in Chicago that you might not be familiar with. That's next. If you're already a WBEZ member, thank you. |
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1:48.6 | The Orthodox have come to be the most sizable Jewish population in West Ridge, but they aren't the |
1:55.0 | only ones in the neighborhood. Our question asker Alice's family moved to West Fitch Avenue almost 30 years ago, and her parents |
2:03.0 | are still there. About a couple of blocks from Indian Boundary Park, a couple of blocks from Decatur |
2:08.1 | classical school. That's kind of where we are. That's Alice's mom, Nina Henry. When they first |
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