Jewish Manchester: the Official Guided Tour

Join Ed Glinert, Manchester's most prolific tour guide, one of the country's major Jewish historians, to tour the city's old Jewish ghetto.

Manchester’s Jewish community first appeared in numbers in the late 18th century around the parish church (hmm). Is that the kind of place where a good Jewish boy or girl should live? Well, that was the old town, where everyone lived.
Gradually Manchester Jews began to move north, first to Strangeways (the area, not the prison, you schmerel ), then Cheetham Hill, Hightown, Prestwich and eventually Whitefield. No further north. No Jew has ever crossed the Irwell, just like Moses with the River Jordan. Alright. One or two.
Only London has a bigger Jewish population in Britain than Manchester. But only Manchester has a Torah Street (with its own bacon-curing factory; really!) and a prison built like a mosque in the heart of the ghetto. And that’s apart from a history embracing that rogue Robert Maxwell, the rich-beyond-rich Nathan Meyer Rothschild, and the rabidly irreligious Karl Marx – all Yiddisher fellers. Well, Marx, oh, we'll come to that.

You may also like the following events from New Manchester Walks:

• Next Wednesday, 7th May, 11:30 am, Manchester's only expert tour of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings in Manchester
• Next month, 18th May, 12:00 pm, The Grand Canals of Manchester: Expert Official Tour in Manchester
• Next month, 18th May, 03:00 pm, Joy Division's Manchester: Annual Ian Curtis Memorial Tour in Manchester