Then and Now

A blip of my daughter and granddaughter as we came to watch Verity and Kitty perform.

One of my favourite days of the year when l can go and see the end of year performance of the CATs ( Centre of Advanced TrainIng) dancers end of year performance.
There are two CATs centres in Leeds, one is at the Northern Ballet where two of my granddaughters train and the other is The Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Chapeltown  just over a mile away.
Each year the venue changes between the two sites and we can watch dancers from the two disciplines.

What has always intrigued me is that the contemporary dance school is based in a former Synagogue : a building that has always fascinated me. 

I wrote my final  dissertation about working class Jewish women in Leeds from the late 19thC for my degree .

Lots of my research was about the journey of Jewish immigrants who left the pogroms in Russia to seek a better life In America. The first part of the  journey was to leave mainland Europe to arrive at Hull in England then cross the country to Liverpool and try and get a boat to NewYork.
Many found themselves without the funds or maybe the energy to get to Liverpool as they only had the train fare to halfway and settled in Leeds to build a new life, eventually ending up as a community that built the synagogue 

What is mostly recorded is the male account  but l wanted to know what life was like for Jewish women. I really loved finding out their stories and experiences. As we all know this wasn’t any easy task because female accounts in those times were not valued or documented.

I am really digressing here but to cut a long story short the Jewish Community in Leeds really added to the city’s prosperity and industrial growth ( think Montague Burton and Marks and Spencer) and as the community grew it built this fine place for worship.

As the Jewish population prospered they moved further afield to greener pastures and eventually the synagogue was no longer viable and was left empty until it was renovated into a dance centre.

What is so wonderful about the building is that it amalgamates new and old architecture.
The seats my girls are sat in are the original seats preserved from the beautiful synagogue.
As l watched the performance my hand stroked the wooden seat imagining….