Ron Grossman: Childhood memories of Hanukkah in Albany Park

Beginning in the new year, Ron Grossman will be writing occasional columns on Chicago that will appear in Sunday’s Life+Travel section, in addition to his regular history features. Here’s a preview. In my youth, 4341 N. Sacramento Ave. was the last Jewish building on the block. There wasn’t anything insidious in that. Chicago’s neighborhoods were ethnically homogenous in the 1950s. So the Jewish and the non-Jewish sections of Albany Park had to meet somewhere. It just happened to be immediately south of the courtyard building where we lived in a...