Blanche Suggs-Killingworth is getting ready to celebrate a major birthday. Her neighborhood, North Lawndale, will turn 150 in 2019.

Suggs-Killingworth, who’s the head of the North Lawndale Historical and Cultural Society, was born in Mississippi, but North Lawndale-on Chicago’s Near West Side-has been her home for more years than she can count. It’s the home of her soul, she says.

“The City of Chicago cannot exist without North Lawndale,” she said. “We need to understand its legacy and make a commitment to the future of this community.” 

The upcoming celebration of the sesquicentennial-and how to honor the neighborhood’s Jewish and African-American history was an essential theme at a recent gathering between members of the Jewish community and North Lawndale leaders and residents, most of them African-American. The community was once a hub of Jewish life in Chicago and even became known as ”Chicago’s Jerusalem.” It was also where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lived in the late 1960s during his campaign for affordable housing.

Sinai Hospital System, a part of JUF’s social service network, is located in North Lawndale, and other local institutions have been longstanding partners with JUF.  

Held in August, the conversation was part of the second annual Dinner & Dialogue series hosted by JUF’s Jewish Community Relations Council. Along with 14 other events, the North Lawndale gathering sought to build on existing relationships and create more connections among individual participants. The small-group conversations throughout the metropolitan Chicago area focused on concerns of all who live here, including racism, anti-Semitism, community violence, Jewish-Black relations, Muslim-Jewish relations, issues facing LGBTQ communities, and many more.

“These encounters are building on existing community partnerships,” said Bill Silverstein, who chairs the JCRC. “The idea is to move the relationship from an institutional level to one based on people’s connections to each other.”

For Emily Berman Pevnick, who co-hosted a conversation with members of the Chicago Urban League’s MetroBoard, the series was a way to connect with an important partner in a new way. Pevnick is an outgoing member of JUF’s Young Leadership Division (YLD) Board and the first chair of YLD’s Community Relations Committee. Together with fellow YLD Board member Benny Ginsburg and MetroBoard’s Ivy Pierce and Martha Watkins, she crafted a discussion about creating spaces for young professionals in existing community institutions. The group shared best practices and thought of ways to support each other as growing leaders in Chicago. 

“It was a special evening to break down silos and learn from each other,” she said. “The positive energy and mutual respect in the room was palpable. We’re already planning next steps to keep the relationships growing.”

Although primarily held throughout August, the series also will include opportunities for engagement throughout the year. One of the main goals is to encourage participants to keep in touch with each other and to share opportunities to get back together outside the formal framework of Dinner & Dialogue, whether it’s joint volunteering, advocacy work, or visits to each other’s worship spaces. 

“Dinner & Dialogue was a really wonderful way to get people who would never meet each other or talk to each other to hear and share ideas,” said Robbin Carroll, the founder of I Grow Chicago in West Englewood and co-host- with Howard and Deb Sitron- of a dinner centering on access to education. “We all grow from this dinner and will be more thoughtful and present to the changes and trauma that communities live with.”

Jane Charney is the director of Domestic Affairs for JUF’s Jewish Community Relations Council.