The history of the Jews in Illinois dates back to 1793, when John Hays, the region's first postmaster, settled in Cahokia from his native New York. The most prominent Jew in Illinois' early days was Abraham Jonas (politician), who moved to Quincy from Cincinnati in 1838. In 1842 he was elected to the Illinois Legislature, where he met Abraham Lincoln, and became his lifelong friend. Another early Jewish settler was Cap. Samuel Noah, the first Jewish graduate of West Point, who taught school at Mount Pulaski, Illinois in the late 1840s.
As of 2013, Illinois has a Jewish population of 297,935.[1] Approximately three-fourths of them live in Chicago. Peoria and Quincy have the second- and third-largest Jewish communities.
See Jewish history in Chicago for further details.
Jews first settled in Chicago in the 1830s. Among the early arrivals was Henry Meyer, an agent of a Jewish colonization society formed in New York in 1842. He settled as a farmer in Cook County and recommended that some Jewish families move to Chicago. The state's first Jewish institutions were soon established in Chicago: the Jewish Burial-Ground Society (established 1846), and the congregations Anshe Ma'arab (1847), B'nai Sholom (1852), Sinai (1861). Since then, 75 more congregations have been organized, 68 of which are in Chicago.
Outside of Chicago, there are eight congregations in seven cities, and numerous dispersed Jews that are members of the Jewish Federation of Southern Illinois.