First established 150 years ago, Chicago Sinai is one of America's
oldest Reform Jewish congregations. Its founders were upwardly mobile
and civically committed men and women, founders and partners of banks
and landmark businesses like Hart Schaffner & Marx, Sears & Roebuck, and
the giant meatpacking firm Morris & Co. As explicitly modern Jews,
Sinai's members supported and led civic institutions and participated
actively in Chicago politics. Perhaps most radically, their Sunday
services, introduced in 1874 and still celebrated today, became a
hallmark of the congregation.In Sundays at Sinai, Tobias Brinkmann
brings modern Jewish history, immigration, urban history, and religious
history together to trace the roots of radical Reform Judaism from
across the Atlantic to this rapidly growing American metropolis.
Brinkmann shines a light on the development of an urban reform
congregation, illuminating Chicago Sinai's practices and history, and
its contribution to Christian-Jewish dialogue in the United States.
Chronicling Chicago Sinai's radical beginnings in antebellum Chicago to
the present, Sundays at Sinai is the extraordinary story of a leading
Jewish Reform congregation in one of America's great cities.