Whenever I am asked by people at IU where I am from I say “I live in a suburb of Chicago”- then some people ask “which one”- I say “Skokie”. To most people where I live is insignificant however, to almost every Jewish person that hears that I am from Skokie they say “Jew City”, it is true while Skokie is a very diverse community, there is a very large Jewish population. Most people take it one step further and associate Skokie with the more traditional Jewish Community due to the myth that most of the reform Jews have moved to other suburbs. Within the Jewish community of Skokie, we find several kosher restaurants (including a Kosher Dunkin Donuts), a few kosher grocery stores, delis and bakeries, a Jewel (large chain grocery store) with its own kosher section, a large Jewish store (Hamakor) where we can find everything “Jewish” from books to Talitot (Jewish prayer shawls), toys, and jewelry, 5 or 6 traditional /orthodox synagogues, 3 reform congregations, 3 conservative synagogues, several day schools ranging from preschool-high school, large chapters of NFTY,USY,NCSY, BBYO, and a large and vibrant JCC (Jewish Community Center).
While all the movements of Judaism in Skokie benefit from the stores, JCC, and restaurants we are often divided outside of those venues. As a reform Jew I often feel excluded when I eat or shop in the kosher restaurants or stores because I don’t look like some of the other customers… I often get weird looks when I, a reform Jew, have concerns about Kashrut especially when I am with my friends who clearly are identify with a more the more traditional and orthodox movements.
In high school I worked for an Orthodox Jewish family as the babysitter for their children, I often would get looks or glares when I would bring the children to their synagogue on a Saturday morning after the adults are done praying.. Even though I would be dressed appropriately and I didn’t look like them, they could tell that I was not a member of their community. It would hurt me whenever I would take the children to eat at a kosher restaurant or when we would walk to the kosher bakery on a Friday morning to get Challah for Shabbat. When we would walk outside of the Aroov on a Saturday because the children wanted to go for a walk and I thought it would be nice to walk through the park that sits right outside of the Aroov.. The men and especially the women of their congregation would give me terrible looks, especially when one of the friends of the children that I was watching would want to come on our walk and their parents would ask me where we were going to go and I would say the park they wouldn’t let their children go with..
One incident showed me what the more traditional movements think about the reform community in Skokie. I was eating lunch with a friend of mine in one of the many kosher restaurants and after we were done eating I insisted that we say the Birkat Hamazon (the after meal prayer) and a friend of hers saw us and asked if he could join us for the prayer and we said of course.. after we were done he asked me if I was from out of town because he had never seen me at their congregation or at his school before and I told him that I lived in Skokie and that I went to the public high school and then he asked what synagogue I belonged to and I told him that I belonged to one of the reform congregations, after I said that he immediately got up and asked my friend what she was doing with a reform Jew in a kosher restaurant and more importantly why would she want to pray with me… her response was that I knew more of the prayers and spoke better Hebrew than she did and that I kept kosher and was just as religious as they were..
That incident truly showed me how divided our community.. The religious kids often more than not don’t really mix outside of their schools and synagogues, none of them attend the public schools unless they are of extreme special needs, they don’t attend the public summer camps, really they don’t mix with other kinds of kids. The friend that I ate with during that incident told me that I was her only friend that was not of the orthodox Jewish movement.
The division is also prevalent within The Niles Township Interfaith Clergy Forum. This group of clergy is made up of priests, rabbis and ministers of all the different faiths and congregations in my area. Of the Jewish population there are only two traditional/orthodox Jewish representatives from two of the congregations in comparison to the representation from all of the reform congregations.
It really hurts our community that is so multicultural to not have these very important and interesting members of our community participate.
Why does it matter what movement of Judaism one person wishes to affiliate with? More importantly, why do those members of the more religious movements feel the need to keep their kids separate from the other Jewish kids?
