Manchester’s revamped Jewish museum celebrates old community

After a massive makeover, Manchester's oldest synagogue has come back to life by housing the Jewish heritage centre

EVEN BEFORE ITS $A11 million renovation, the Manchester Jewish Museum was a remarkably eye-catching institution.

Housed in a former synagogue on a busy road in an industrial part of northern England’s largest city, it stood out from the car washes, supermarkets and hardware stores of Cheetham Hill Road thanks to its red-brick facade. The look marries Victorian architecture and the Moorish style favoured by the members of the Portuguese-Spanish Sephardic Jewish community that built it in 1874.

As it expanded and gentrified, the Jewish community of Manchester – a diverse group with many blue-collar laborers from across the United Kingdom and Eastern Europe who converged because of the city’s steel production and other industries – moved to leafy suburbs north of the bustling centre.

But the synagogue building, the oldest surviving in Manchester, remained a communal symbol long after its congregation disintegrated in the 1980s. It became a museum, the only one in the country housed inside a synagogue.

FULL STORY Manchester’s revamped Jewish museum celebrates the community that left it behind (JTA/Haaretz)

Photo: The permanent display at the Manchester Jewish Museum celebrates the blue-collar roots of the community (Chris Payne)