Step Inside Manchester Jewish Museum: A Journey Through History and Heritage

Manchester, home to Britain’s second largest Jewish community of around 35,000 people, is home to the Manchester Jewish Museum. Located on Cheetham Hill Road, the museum is housed in a restored former Spanish and Portuguese synagogue, originally built in 1874. It celebrates the history, culture, and contributions of Manchester’s Jewish community through its historic building and engaging exhibitions.

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Museum

The Manchester Jewish Museum (MJM) first opened in 1984 in a Grade II* listed former Spanish and Portuguese synagogue, built in 1874 on Cheetham Hill, one of Manchester’s most diverse neighborhoods. Following a major redevelopment completed in 2021, the museum now features a modern exhibition gallery, vegetarian café, shop, learning studio and kitchen, alongside the beautifully restored historic synagogue as part of its permanent exhibition.

Open seven days a week, the museum offers visitors an engaging experience of Jewish history and culture. In recognition of its outstanding redevelopment, the museum’s architects, Citizens Design Bureau, received the 2023 RIBA North West Award and the RIBA North West Project Architect of the Year Award for directors Katy Marks and Candice Moore.

Collections

The Manchester Jewish Museum holds more than 31,000 objects that document the history of Jewish migration and settlement in Manchester. Its collections include over 530 oral history testimonies, featuring 138 recorded interviews with Holocaust survivors and refugees, nearly 21,000 photographs, and a wide range of historic objects, documents, and ephemera.

Collection highlights include a diary written by Kindertransport refugee girls, a Russian washboard used as a cricket bat, an English-Hebrew teapot, film footage of Oswald Mosley marching through Manchester, items made by Jewish internees on the Isle of Man, and personal belongings of a Holocaust survivor who survived by hiding in Polish graveyards, churches, and a coal cellar.

The museum’s oral histories provide valuable first-hand accounts of migration, settlement, and integration into British society, while its extensive photographic archive records the lives, communities, and buildings of one of the UK’s earliest migrant populations. Its Holocaust collection, comprising more than 700 hours of recorded testimony alongside over 1,500 photographs, objects, and archival materials, is of national and international significance, preserving survivors’ experiences and promoting education, tolerance, and understanding.

Gallery

Following a 6 million pound redevelopment, the Manchester Jewish Museum features a purpose built gallery showcasing its collections through three themes: Journeys, Communities, and Identities. Although the stories are rooted in Jewish history, these universal themes are designed to resonate with both Jewish and non-Jewish visitors.

The Journeys Gallery explores the reasons Jewish people came to Manchester, including the search for opportunity, escape from poverty, hardship, and persecution, and the desire to join established communities. Covering migration from 18th century peddlers to 20th century refugees and Holocaust survivors, the gallery highlights the diverse experiences of Jewish settlement in the city. It also features a four-screen immersive film and interactive digital displays that bring these personal stories to life.

The Communities Gallery explores how the Jewish community in Manchester was formed, through setting up social organizations, sports clubs, synagogues, theatres and businesses. It features some prominent names that were established in the city such Marks & Spencer, Slazenger or Dannimac raincoats.

The Identities Gallery features more contemporary interviews with members of Manchester’s Jewish community, sharing their thoughts and perspectives of what it means to be a Jewish Mancunian today.

Manchester Jewish Museum Café

The Manchester Jewish Museum café offers a contemporary vegetarian, kosher-style menu made with locally sourced produce and authentic Jewish ingredients. Blending traditional recipes with modern flavors, the menu reflects Jewish culinary heritage through dishes that have evolved over time, provide nourishment, and bring people together. The café also provides a welcoming space where visitors can relax, reflect on their museum experience, and connect with others.

The Manchester Jewish Museum café menu changes with the seasons, celebrating fresh flavors and the stories of Jewish food traditions. This summer, Shorbat Adas, a Middle Eastern inspired lentil soup served with lemon oil, pitta chips and crispy fried onions, serves as a delicious nod to our historic Sephardi synagogue. Alongside our seasonal dishes, we offer a bagel bar featuring bagels from Brackmanns, a much-loved local kosher bakery.

The café is an award-winning café, it was named Best Museum Café of the Year at the Museums + Heritage Awards 2022 and continues to receive glowing praise from visitors for its welcoming atmosphere and delicious food.

Learning Kitchen

The Manchester Jewish Museum’s Learning Kitchen is a modern, fully equipped teaching space where schools, community groups, and businesses can explore Jewish culture through cooking and baking. Visitors participate in hands-on workshops featuring traditional Jewish recipes while learning about Jewish history, food, and festivals. The space hosts school workshops, including Challah bread baking, community events that encourage cultural exchange through shared meals, and can also be hired for private celebrations, workshops, and dinner parties.

Historical Backgrounds

Jewish people first arrived in England in 1066, when King William the Conqueror invited Jewish families from Rouen, France, to settle in London, valuing their financial expertise in helping to develop his new kingdom.

Manchester’s Jewish community began to form in the mid-18th century, when Jewish peddlers settled in the city. By the 1780s, permanent settlers such as Jacob Nathan had arrived, and in 1794 the community established Manchester’s first synagogue and Jewish burial ground near Shudehill and Long Millgate.

As Manchester’s Sephardi (Spanish and Portuguese) Jewish community grew, members met on February 4, 1872, to plan the city’s first Sephardi synagogue. They commissioned the Jewish architect Edward Salomons, who designed the building in a style inspired by the Spanish and Portuguese heritage of the congregation, blending Gothic Revival and Italianate architectural influences.

Which brings us to 1874.

In 1874, Manchester was known as “Cottonopolis“, the thriving center of the global cotton trade. While textile production took place in surrounding mill towns, Manchester served as the industry’s financial and commercial hub. The city was prosperous but heavily industrialized, with smoke-filled skies, crowded working-class districts, and wealthy merchants living in grand homes.

At the time, Manchester’s Jewish population had grown to around 4,000, divided between established, prosperous families of German origin and newer, poorer immigrants from Eastern Europe.

And it was on May 6, 1874, that the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue officially opened. Designed by the prominent Manchester architect Edward Salomons, the building was constructed in the Moorish Revival style, reflecting the Spanish and Portuguese heritage of the Sephardi congregation and remaining one of the city’s most distinctive historic religious buildings.

The Sephardi community continued to grow, and a second Sephardi synagogue was built in south Manchester in 1904. Over time, the synagogue adapted to meet the congregation’s needs, including the addition of a permanent succah building in 1919, now used as the museum’s learning studio and kitchen. The synagogue also features over 40 stained-glass windows, many depicting biblical scenes, including a memorial window dedicated to former president Ezra Altaras.

By the 1970s the congregation was moving out to the suburbs, and the synagogue membership was starting to wane. It was in 1974 that the Jewish Heritage Committee was formed to preserve Manchester’s disappearing Jewish history. Historian Bill Williams documented the community’s story in The Making of Manchester Jewry, covering Jewish settlement from 1740 to 1875.

On March 24, 1984, the former Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue was converted into the Manchester Jewish Museum. Since then, the museum has shared the story of Manchester’s Jewish community with thousands of visitors and school groups. In 2019, the museum closed for a £6 million redevelopment, restoring the Grade II listed synagogue and creating new exhibition and learning spaces.

During the redevelopment in 2020, builders made an extraordinary discovery: a time capsule that had been placed beneath the synagogue in 1873 when the building was first constructed. The capsule was carefully opened in 2024, offering a remarkable glimpse into the lives and aspirations of the congregation who founded the synagogue over 150 years ago.

The museum also marked the synagogue’s 150th anniversary in 2024 with a program of celebrations, including a well-attended Open Day featuring free activities, performances and talks. To commemorate the milestone, the museum also produced a short promotional film celebrating the synagogue’s history, its restoration and its place at the heart of Manchester’s Jewish community.

Today, the Manchester Jewish Museum’s beautifully restored synagogue serves as both a unique historic exhibit and a vibrant cultural venue. Preserving a Sephardi Jewish place of worship dating back to the 1870s, it offers visitors a window into Manchester’s Jewish heritage while also hosting performances, talks, concerts, and community events that celebrate the history and culture of the Jewish community in Manchester.

Contact Information:

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

Phone: 0161 834 9879

Email: curator@manchesterjewishmuseum.com

Website: https://www.manchesterjewishmuseum.com/