Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation - History

History

The Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation was formally founded in 1935. By 1999, it had a membership of 550. Reverend Leslie Olsberg retired from his position in 2008, aged 86, after 35 years' service. The congregation is housed in a 1937 red brick postwar building on Middleton Road, Crumpsall. Architectural historian Carol Herselle Krinsky describes it, unadmiringly, as having a "central block with projecting wings" and "a disproportionately large glass entrance wall." According to architectural historian Sharman Kadish, the building is one of three Manchester area synagogues modeled on the 1934 building of Manchester's Holy Law Synagogue with its tirpartite facade in a "pleasing international style." The other two are the Manchester Reform Synagogue Jackson's Row, and the Prestwich Hebrew Congregation.

On 22 April 2000 and again on 15 September 2002 antisemitic remarks were shouted at the synagogue. Synagogue security cameras captured a murder on film in 2008, when violinist Michael Kahan was stabbed to death outside a Kosher bakery near the synagogue building by a mentally ill assailant.

Read more about this topic:  Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...
    Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)

    The principle office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.
    Tacitus (c. 55–117)

    Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.
    Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)