Exploring the 151 year history of the Manchester Jewish Museum

The area north of Manchester city centre between Cheetham Hill Road and Strangeways to the west was once the heart of the local Jewish community.

Many of the people who lived there were the counterparts of today’s refugees, having migrated from eastern Europe to escape poverty, persecution and pogroms, especially the wave of pogroms which followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, and those of 1903-6.

They arrived by boat in Hull where they boarded trains to take them to Liverpool and on to America.

Some decided to stay in this country. Life here wasn’t as bad as it was in Russia, where Jewish boys were conscripted into the Tsar’s army at the age of 12 and were required to serve for 25 years.

Those who stayed in Manchester settled a short distance from where they had arrived – Victoria Station – and opened their own institutions including schools, synagogues and welfare bodies such as the Board of Guardians for the Relief of the Jewish Poor of Manchester (founded 1867), the Manchester Jewish Working Men’s Club (1887) and Manchester Jewish Ladies’ Visiting Committee (1884) for ‘visiting the poor and attending to their sanitary condition’.

Many worked in the textile industry or were self-employed or started their own businesses. Most had ordinary lives. A few had extraordinary lives.

Sam Rabin was born Samuel Rabinovitch on 20 June 1903 at Dewhurst Street, Cheetham, the son of Jacob, a cap cutter and milliner, and Sarah Rabinovitch, a jewellery assembler.

In 1914, at the age of 11, he won a scholarship to the Manchester Municipal School of Art, making him the youngest pupil ever to attend the college, where he was taught drawing by French artist Adolphe Valette.

He went on to become a sculptor, artist, film actor, art teacher, singer, boxer, wrestler and a 1928 Olympic bronze medalist in wrestling.

Growth and migration

The community grew from 2,000 in 1851 to a peak of 33,000 in 1934, with nine synagogues on Cheetham Hill Road alone.

There was even a Jewish hospital on Elizabeth Street on the site of where St David’s Court apartments are today.

As they prospered and started moving north to suburbs like Prestwich and Whitefield, many of the buildings on Cheetham Hill Road no longer served their original purpose and were converted into warehouses or other commercial premises.

The Manchester New Synagogue at 122 Cheetham Hill Road which opened in 1889 is now home to the Jordash clothing company but you can still see the large Star of David emblem on the front of the building.

Oldest synagogue in Manchester

The only synagogue remaining on Cheetham Hill Road which hasn’t been converted into commercial premises is the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue next to Elliott’s car hire, close to Manchester Fort.

Designed by Jewish architect Edward Salomons and inspired by the Spanish and Portuguese (Sephardi) origins of its members, it opened on the 6th of May, 1874 and is the oldest surviving synagogue building in Manchester.

It closed as a place of worship in 1982 and reopened two years later as the home of Manchester Jewish Museum. Following a £6 million redevelopment part-funded by a £3m grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the museum now features a new gallery, café, shop and learning studio and kitchen.

The Spanish and Portuguese synagogue is now Grade II listed, having been returned to its former glory and completely restored as part of the redevelopment.

It is a beautiful example of Victorian architecture executed in Moorish style and has been described by English Heritage as ‘one of the highlights of Victorian Gothic architecture’ in the UK.

Architecture historian Nikolaus Pevsner described it as ‘distinctive, quite different in style from either a church or a classical temple, and appropriate for its congregation of Sephardic Jews – descendants of those who were driven out of Spain and Portugal in the late fifteenth century, many of them then settling in the Middle East’.

Particularly noteworthy are the splendid stained glass windows and the distinctive cast-iron fitments.

Manchester Jewish Museum, 190 Cheetham Hill Road Manchester M8 8LW 

Manchester Jewish Museum is a registered charity (Registered Charity No. 508278).