South Cook News

Agudath Israel of Illinois director of government affairs Shlomo Soroka views the current map redistricting process as a time for his community to be fully heard from and accounted for.

“The Orthodox Jewish community which I represent is one that unfortunately has been overlooked a number of times already in terms of making sure our community is kept together,” Soroka said during a recent House and Senate Joint Redistricting Committee hearing that focused on the sub-circuit maps for Cook County. “With these new maps we are literally divided in half between the 9th and the 10th circuits.”

Soroka argues residents of the community have fought long and hard to have a voice about the direction of their community.

“This is a community that has grown really significantly over the past decade,” he said. “We're primarily concentrated in the West Ridge area in Chicago and spilling over into Skokie and Lincolnwood. So, just by way of background, the Orthodox Jewish community has been really a significant part of Illinois' social fabric since the early 1800s.

The Senate and House Redistricting Committees recently released a proposed map of new Cook County Judicial Subcircuit boundaries with the plan calling for the number of subcircuits to rise by five to 20 largely on the strength of population growth across the Chicagoland area. The change is being sold as a plan that accounts for the shifts in populations seen since the turn of the millennium.

“So with this new system, the number of Jews who identify as Orthodox began to rebound and we really experienced quite a significant resurgence,” Soroka said. “A survey from 2010 estimated there to be 21,000 Orthodox Jews in the area but current estimates put that number at approximately 30,000. Our day school enrollment has doubled over the past decade to well over 5,000 students, close to 6,000. We've opened six new schools. We have numerous new major synagogues that have been built in the neighborhood.”

By Soroka’s account, over the last 60 months alone the community has also added some 300 families and over 30 retail stores.

“Our neighbors are not only the center of Illinois' Orthodox Jewish community but are really the epicenter of the Midwest Orthodox Jewish community,” he said. “When it comes to county government, I would say the top issues of the primary areas of concern to us are public safety, education, and affordable housing.