2. Manchester Jewry and the Sephardim before 1872

There is some evidence that Spanish and Portuguese Jews held service in Liverpool in the mid 18th century, but the old Spanish and Portuguese Jews of London were not attracted to the burgeoning cotton-manufacturing trade that transformed Manchester in the 19th century. However many foreigners particularly Germans did set up business in Manchester, among them many German Jews. These German Jews congregated on the rise of land overlooking the city that led up from the old town centre by the cathedral, along the northern road up Cheetham Hill, an area that was still a leafy, and desirable suburb.

William Wylde: View of Manchester from the North (1857)

In 1857-8 the community was established but divided and they built two synagogues; an Orthodox synagogue, on the other side of the main road from Cheetham Town Hall, known as the Manchester Hebrew Congregation or the Great Synagogue (sadly vandalised and demolished in 1981) and a Reform Synagogue, the Manchester Congregation of British Jews (destroyed during the war (1)), a little further down the road at Park Place.

Manchester Hebrew Congregation: the Great Synagogue, Cheetham (1857-8)

Although there were ritual and ideological differences between the two congregations, the two communities of anglicised German Jews remained on amicable terms, indeed the justly admired, mixed choir of the Reform Synagogue was often invited to perform at events in the Great Synagogue as late as the 1930s - seemingly a lost world of old Anglo-Jewish tolerance.

The opening of sea links between Manchester and the Levant, the import of Egyptian cotton (Manchester's second source of raw cotton after North America) and the export of finished textile to the Middle East and beyond after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 brought many Levantine merchants to Manchester. In the space of a few decades the city had become remarkably cosmopolitan, with colonies of Greek, Armenian, Syrian and North African merchants, adding to the  well-established colony of Germans. Among the Levantines were a growing number of Sephardi Jews from around the Mediterranean; the Maghreb (Gibraltar and Morocco), Syria (mainly Aleppo),   Egypt, Constantinople and Greece (3).  

Despite the fact that the Reform movement in the UK had begun in 1840 when the West London Synagogue was founded as a break-away from Bevis Marks, and that the movement had tried to overcome the division between German and 'Portuguese' Jews by calling themselves the Congregation of British Jews, Manchester Reform Synagogue had little appeal for Manchester Sephardim (2). The few Sephardim that were in Manchester in the 1850-60s became members of the Great Synagogue. These included Sabbato Besso, Issac Azula, Elia Levy and Isaac Belisha (1865), Felice Naggiar (1868), Saul Bigio (1869), Moses Messulam (1870) and Raphael Besso (1871), most of whom would play a large part in the new Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue (Williams, p. 320). However there was one thing that would link the Sephardim to the Reform Synagogue and that was its architect and member, Edward Salomons, for Salomons would later design the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue. The Reform Synagogue at Park Place already showed signs of the 'Moorish' style that he was to put to such good use in the Sephardi Synagogue in the horse shoe arches of the exterior and interior.

Manchester Reform Synagogue, Park Place: Exterior

Manchester Reform Synagogue, Park Place: Exterior

A much more serious rift opened up in the Great Synagogue in 1872 that was probably the catalyst for the Sephardim to separate themselves from the Ashkenazi synagogue. The increasing number of poor immigrants from Eastern Europe were a cause of concern to the affluent members of the Great Synagogue. In particular, the manners of these Yiddish-speakers were very different and quite alien to those of the anglicised Germans, and doubly more so to the Sephardim. A group of members decided to relocate to South Manchester away from the crowds of poor Jews to the well-healed suburb of Chorlton-on-Medlock (now All Saints) where they bought a building to convert into the South Manchester Synagogue (to become known in the north as the Englisher Shul because of the decorous British middle-class manners of its members). A number of Sephardi who would later join the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation were associated with the foundation of the South Manchester synagogue (Abraham Abadi, Isaac Bensaud, Joseph Besso, Moses Bianco and Saul Bigio (Williams p. 354)), but others had been coming together in private minyanim observing the Sephardi customs. There had been minyanim organised successively in Southall Street (on a site subsequently occupied by the Woolpack Hotel), 59 Cheetham Hill Road (in the 'Hayshop Shul' above a provender shop) and the old building of the Jews School at 78 Cheetham Hill Road (then called York St.) and a Syrian minyan met in the house of Ezra Sharim in Petworth Street (Hist 23, p 18-19). A reporter from the Jewish Chronicle wrote of one these meetings that he was  "delighted with the good order ... maintained in their private prayer room ... it speaks well for the a community that is formed of so many different nationalities" (JC, 30 Aug. 1872)

It seems, however, that the feeling among the Sephardim was now that there was enough of a community to form a congregation of their own in which they would feel more comfortable as so in February 1872 one of their number, Mr. Elia Negrin, sent around a circular inviting people to a meting the Old Jews School on the 4th February "... in order to bring forward a discussion as to the mode of improving the present place of worship, the better organisation of conducting it, with the view of erecting later on a more suitable place of worship" (SPC MB 4 Feb 1872). The Congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews was about to be born ...

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(1) The only Jewish building in the UK to be destroyed by enemy action during WWII. 

(2) The Henriques family, an old Spanish and Portuguese family were, however, committed members Manchester Reform Synagogue.

(3) 'The Millet of Manchester: Arab Merchants and Cotton Trade': Fred Halliday, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1992), pp. 159-176.