Walter Roth, president of the Chicago Jewish Historical Society, says the 1924 book History of the Jews of Chicago is a story of certain “mainstreams” within the Jewish community. “It’s not the work of a professional historian. It preserves certain historical patterns.”
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Yet Roth thinks the omissions are insignificant compared to the information Meites did collect and record for all time. “Certain events in the Jewish labor movement aren’t mentioned in the book,” he admits. “And certain labor leaders at Hart Schaffner & Marx–they were Jews, and he doesn’t treat that. He doesn’t mention Leopold and Loeb or the Franks boy. They were all from prominent Jewish families in Kenwood. Meites believed Jews should be good to each other. We did have Jewish gangsters and hoodlums, but they didn’t get any space. I guess that’s understandable.” Meites made an exception for gangster Samuel J. Morton, a shady Jewish cohort of mobster Dion O’Banion who also happened to have an outstanding military record during World War I.
So why has the historical society chosen to reprint Meites’s seven-pound, three-inch-thick tome, a Jewish history book filled with gaps? A book that tells hundreds of stories and has hundreds of photographs, none of which is less than 64 years old (it was updated in 1927)? “It’s like a book of your family history,” says Roth. “It tells you all about your family, where they grew up, who they knew, and who they were.” Unless, of course, your Jewish ancestors were hoodlums or troublemakers–without military records to redeem their honor.
“It’s a concept I find charming,” says Roth. “He wanted so badly to be ‘American.’ With the purchase story, what he was really saying was, ‘It’s wonderful–we can show the goyim how important we are.’”
