These are exciting times for Manchester’s Jewish Museum and About Manchester takes a look.

Amongst the clothing and haberdashery stores, the cafe’s and the takeaways along the Cheetham Hill Road, a little set back from the road lies one of Manchester treasures.Step inside and you are transported back to the end of the nineteenth century when this area was a prosperous suburb and attracted the people that built this synagogue.

They were Sephardic Jews, who had come to the booming city, establishing businesses and built this temple to their religion. Between 1875 and the outbreak of World War One, one hundred and twenty thousand Eastern European Jews settled in England and in Manchester their population would reach thirty five thousand with North Manchester becoming the city’s Jewish Quarter, playing a leading part in the evolution of Zionism.

Over time the community moved further out from the city centre, many north to Prestwich.

The synagogue finally closed its doors in the 1970’s, the museum retains it as the centre point of your visit with the upper balcony, where Jewish women would worship, used to tell the story of Manchester’s Jewish community.

  
Opened in 1984, it now has more than forty volunteers on its books and provides a wide range of outreach projects into the local community and beyond.

Now there are plans to expand, wrap a visitors centre around the outside and display more of the collection, currently only five per cent is on show.

The man at the centre of this is Max Dunbar with a career in museums, he counts the National Portrait Gallery and Christies amongst his CV.

The outreach and development work has been going on, talking to the local community and the wider Jewish community , talking to architects and developing models that focus on that key word for museum’s now, sustainability with the help of a legacy grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The next stage will see a capital application to the Fund of around £2.8m, matched with the million pounds that they have already raised, and a further million still to come, by the end of 2016.If this all goes to plan, the museum will close by Spring 2017  and will  reopen in 2019.

Max tells me that there are three aspects to the museum’s rebirth.Besides the new heritage centre, the original synagogue will be restored and there are plans to create a Holocaust memorial gallery.But the museum will be more than that he adds, becoming a venue for events not necessarily connected with the museum.Some of that has a,ready been happening, there have been comedy nights and Bollywood nights .

Go and take a look.

The  museum is  6 days a week – Sun-Thurs (10am-4pm) and Fri (10am-1pm)

Closed Saturdays, Bank Holidays 

ADMISSION

Adults – £4.50 Concessions – £3.50 (includes museum tours and admission to exhibitions)

Manchester Jewish Museum, 190 Cheetham Hill Road, Manchester, M8 8LW (10 minutes walk from Manchester Victoria Station and next to Manchester Fort Shopping Centre)

Details of events

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