Manchester Jewish Museum


The Manchester Jewish Museum is a Jewish history museum, located on Cheetham Hill Road in Manchester, England. The museum occupies the site of a former Orthodox Jewish synagogue, the place of worship for the Congregation of Spanish & Portuguese Jews, called the Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue, also the Sha'are Tephillah Synagogue. The congregation worships in the Sephardic rite from premises located on Moor Lane in Kersal, Salford.
The building, used as a synagogue from 1874 until 1984, was listed as Grade II* in 1974.

History

The former synagogue for Spanish and Portuguese Jews was completed in 1874. However, the building became redundant through the migration of the Jewish population away from the Cheetham area further north to Prestwich and Whitefield. It re-opened as a museum in March 1984 telling the story of the history of Jewish settlement in Manchester and its community over more than 200 years.
The museum reopened on 2 July 2021 following a 6 million redevelopment and extension. The museum includes a new gallery, vegetarian café, shop and learning studio and kitchen, as well as complete restoration of the former Spanish and Portuguese synagogue.
Following completion of the renovation works, the Manchester Jewish Museum won two awards at the annual British Construction Industry Awards alongside architects Citizens Design Bureau and structural engineers Buro Happold.
The museum holds over 31,000 items in its collection, documenting the story of Jewish migration and settlement in Manchester. It includes over 530 oral history testimonies, over 20,000 photographs, 138 recorded interviews with Holocaust survivors and refugees and other objects, documents and ephemera.

Moorish Revival building

The 1874 synagogue was completed in the Moorish Revival style, designed by Edward Salomons, a prominent Manchester architect. Although the synagogue was not the largest or most magnificent of the world's many Moorish Revival synagogues, which include the opulent Princes Road Synagogue in Liverpool, it was considered to be a "jewel". The style, a homage to the architecture of Moorish Spain, perhaps seemed particularly fitting for the home of a Sephardic congregation. The two tiers of horseshoe windows on the façade were emblematic of the style, and the recessed doorway and arcade of five windows on the floor above the entrance are particularly decorative. Inside, a horseshoe arch frames the heichal and polychrome columns support the galleries. The mashrabiyya latticework on the front doors is particularly fine.