‘Roving Rabbis’ Seek Out Elusive South Side Jews

It’s not every day residents on Chicago’s South Side see two men in Orthodox Jewish garb walking the streets. But they might see them every day for the rest of the month.

In their black suits and broad-brimmed black hats, yeshiva students Yessi Edelkopf and Shaul Wolf cut an unusual figure as they roam the neighborhoods near the University of Chicago’s Hyde Park campus and parts south, seeking out fellow Jews to engage in brief conversations and perhaps to give a box of Shabbat candles.

In three days of searching, the earnest, young duo said they have greeted about a half-dozen South Side Jews. The rabbinical students have proved a spectacle so unusual, they have been asked to pose for pictures with residents who have never laid eyes on an Orthodox Jew.

“A lot of people think we’re Amish,” said Edelkopf, a 21-year-old from upstate New York, on Sunday.

On the city’s North Side and northern suburbs, the sight of Orthodox men isn’t rare, and members of the Jewish community never have to travel far for a kosher meal, religious services or even just a conversation about their faith.

Edelkopf and Wolf, a 20-year-old native of Melbourne, Australia, are two of hundreds of rabbis-in-training who spend their three-week break from yeshiva study as “Roving Rabbis” who try to connect with more isolated Jews in communities as far-flung as Guam and rural Russia.

“People get used to a way of life, and faith and religion can take a back seat,” said Rabbi Yossi Brackman. “People like us come along and … talk to them, see if they want to go to a prayer group, go to services, or maybe just have a little gefilte fish.”

The Jewish enclaves on Chicago’s South Side once were robust, though the population thinned after World War II.

Most Jews living south of Hyde Park are in their 70s and 80s, and stayed put as their neighborhoods became increasingly African-American, said Brackman.

Since founding the Chabad Jewish Center in Hyde Park 10 years ago, Brackman has encountered many of those scattered Jews, and this year he brought Edelkopf and Wolf to help his search.

Understandably, such a scattered population can be hard to find.

“We just walk up to people and ask ‘Are you Jewish? Do you know anyone who is?’” Wolf said.

One such encounter last week led to a brief conversation with a Jewish man in his 30s near the university. The man wound up strapping on a traditional tefillin and praying with Wolf and Edelkopf.

“He said he hadn’t done anything religious since his bar mitzvah,” Edelkopf said.

Among other techniques, the rabbis-in-training cold-call phone listings with Jewish surnames, and they have walked into an office building and checked the registry for Jewish names or businesses.

“Most of the people we call say that they’re not Jewish, maybe nine out of 10,” Brackman said. “I was very surprised at the number of African-Americans with the last names Levy and Cohen.”