But in one race, Chicago's 8th Judicial Subcircuit of the Circuit Court of Cook County, seven candidates are vying to fill a vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Nancy Drew Sheehan. Four of them are Jewish.

Several other Jewish candidates are running in other judicial elections, including Alan J. Greiman in the First District Appellate Court and Michael B. Hyman in the Cook County Circuit, both countywide offices.

The judicial elections, along with other elections and presidential primaries, take place Tuesday, Feb. 5.

The 8th Subcircuit lies entirely within the city of Chicago and includes neighborhoods from the Loop to Old Town and parts of Uptown, Chinatown, Andersenville, Lakeview, Edgewater and Rogers Park. All of the candidates running in the subcircuit are Democrats. They're discussed here in alphabetical order.

To see ratings for each judge from the Alliance of Bar Associations, made up of a number of local bar associations, go to VoteforJudges.org and click on Judicial Evaluations and Results.

Gideon Abraham Baum is the child of Holocaust survivors and a graduate of Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School and Ida Crown Jewish Academy. "I have a really strong Jewish identity," he says, and adds that he has spent many months in Israel visiting relatives who live there.

Professionally Baum has worked as a solo practitioner and as a staff attorney for the Illinois Senate Democratic Caucus, where he worked with former Sen. Howard Carroll on a bill that increased penalties for hate crimes following attacks on synagogues in West Rogers Park.

For the last nine years Baum has worked in the Cook County State's Attorney's office, where he serves as a family law specialist, prosecuting people who abuse and neglect their children. He has also worked in the areas of child support and in the court's juvenile division.

"I've been in the courtroom every day since 1998," he says. "I would not run in this election unless I thought I had the experience to do the job."

He decided to run for judge because "I like the law so much and I want to stay in (family) law." New judges often start out in traffic court, he says, but if they have expertise in a particular area of law they are usually placed on a court that deals with those types of cases. If he wins Baum hopes he could be placed in a court dealing with abuse and neglect cases or other aspects of family law.

"I'm a lucky guy, a first generation American, and I want to be involved in this the rest of my life," he says.

Debra Kramer Marcus says she decided to run for judge because "I believe the judiciary needs experienced and qualified female judges" and especially more female Jewish judges. Only 20 percent of the judges in Cook County are women and a very small number of those are Jewish women, she says.

"I've had a very successful law career and I'm at a time in my life when I'd like to take that commitment I've used to build my law practice to the next level. I feel I could make my mark and give something back in that way," she says.

Marcus, who grew up in Morton Grove, founded a boutique-style law firm in 1985 that handled cases from both the plaintiff's and defendant's side involving personal injuries of all types, from car accidents to individuals suing doctors and hospitals. She currently works in another law firm in the personal injury field and has won more than $300 million in verdicts and settlements for injured clients.

Marcus emphasizes that she has 27 years of courtroom experience, has represented both plaintiffs and defendants and has argued cases in the Illinois Appellate Court, federal appellate courts and Illinois Supreme Court.

She has close ties to the Jewish community and belongs to both Anshe Emet Synagogue, where her daughter celebrated her bat mitzvah, and Lincolnwood Jewish Congregation, where her husband's family belongs.

Marcus says she feels strongly about the importance of Jewish women populating the bench in greater numbers. "More Jewish men are making their mark on the bench and I think that's phenomenal. I think it's a really important thing to get more women judges and more Jewish people altogether and especially Jewish women because there are just so few of them," she says.

"All you have in this life is your reputation and your integrity, and that's what I want to bring," she says.

Judge James A. Shapiro was appointed to fill the vacancy in the subcircuit created when Judge Sheehan retired last August. Now he is running for election to fill the position permanently.

At the same time Shapiro is "sort of wearing two hats" by serving as president of the Decalogue Society of Lawyers, an organization of Jewish lawyers. He held that office before he was appointed to the judgeship.

He was formerly an assistant U.S. attorney, special assistant attorney general and chair of the Cook Country Mandatory Arbitration Program, as well as an adjunct professor at John Marshall Law School, a position he has held since 2003.

Since his appointment to the judgeship, "I've been trying to be a good judge and at the same time promoting the Jewish legal community," he says. In fact, he sees it as his mission to help correct the imbalance in Jewish representation on the bench.

"Our numbers are shrinking. We're 37 percent of the legal profession and only nine percent of the judiciary in Cook County, where there is a significant Jewish population. It used to be almost half in the early 1960s," he says.

"The Jewish legal community has had a problem electing Jewish judges to the bench countywide for the past dozen years," he says. "I'm running in the only subcircuit where a Jewish candidate has a chance of winning, and there are four. It's a virtual feeding frenzy. That's a problem too because we're carving up the Jewish vote four ways." He notes, however, that "it's not true that Jews will always vote for a Jewish candidate," nor should they if they don't feel that candidate is the best qualified.

Why the dearth of Jewish judges? There are a number of reasons, Shapiro says, including the fact that people of all ethnicities tend to vote for judges with an Irish surname ("the default vote"), but he believes there's another explanation. "Some people are afraid to say it, to call a spade a spade, but I'm not: The only explanation I can come up with is a form of latent anti-Semitism among Illinois voters."

His president's message for the Decalogue Society, he says, "called for adding more Jewish judges, and that's what I'm trying to do, add one more" - himself.

Aaron J. Weiss credits his interest in law as beginning when he was 12 years old and found himself in the middle of a rally of Holocaust survivors protesting a neo-Nazi group's plan to march in Skokie. "That left such an impact on me," he says.

"At that age, I didn't have an understanding of the law and I wondered why the court would revictimize people and allow (the Nazis) to march. As I grew up I read the case law and realized that the court has to be fair and independent. It was the right decision because of freedom of speech."

Weiss, who grew up in Skokie and once worked as a garbageman and as a waiter at a kosher restaurant, says his professional life has been devoted to just such issues of fairness and responsibility, due in large part to his Jewish upbringing. "I think there is a kind of Jewish way of thinking when it comes to law and justice. It's ingrained," he says.

For the last 13 years Weiss has worked at the Public Guardian's office, where he represents abused and neglected children, elderly people who become incapacitated and individuals involved in custody battles. He is currently a supervisor with six attorneys, a paralegal and a secretary working under him. Counting his own and other attorneys' cases, "there are over 600 children I'm responsible for," he says.

"I litigate every day, I'm in court every day, I've done hundreds of thousands of trials. I've been in front of various judges and been able to see the court system, what works and what doesn't," Weiss says. "I know what's going on in the county, what services are out there."

He decided to run for judge, he says, because "my life has been devoted to public service. I've been doing this for a long time now. I believe I would make a very good judge, one that would be fair, impartial and independent."