Chicago Hebrew Institute Athletics Jews came to Chicago from
virtually every country in Europe and the Middle East, but
especially from Germany and Eastern Europe. Unlike most other
immigrant groups, Jews left the Old Country with no thoughts of
ever returning to lands where so many had experienced poverty,
discrimination, and even sporadic massacres. Jews began
trickling into Chicago shortly after its incorporation in 1833.
A century later Chicago's 270,000 Jews (about 9 percent of the
city's population) were outnumbered only in New York and Warsaw.
By the end of the twentieth century, approximately 270,000 Jews
lived in the Chicago metropolitan area, but only about 30
percent of the entire Jewish population remained within
Chicago's first permanent Jewish settlers arrived in 1841 from
Central Europe, largely from the German states. A few lived
briefly in eastern cities before being attracted to the
burgeoning city of Chicago. These early settlers included Henry
Horner, whose grandson of the same name would