How Manchester forged Chaim Weizmann and modern Zionism

For what Manchester may have lacked in elegance or centuries-old intellectual prestige, it more than made up for in innovation and industry. The university fostered a dynamic research environment with strong ties to local munitions factories, enabling Weizmann to test his discoveries during the First World War. His method for producing acetone – a solvent crucial for munitions – brought him to the attention of senior British politicians and gave him the credibility that would later prove vital.

Being based in Manchester also gave him direct access to Britain’s industrial heartlands and a work culture that embraced experimentation. It’s debatable whether Weizmann’s cutting-edge microbiological techniques would have survived the more conservative, tradition-bound institutions of the South.

Equally important were his personal connections. A small but tight-knit network of journalists and civil servants formed around him, dubbing themselves the “Manchester School of Zionism”. Suddenly, the city’s supposedly “provincial” character became an advantage. This dedicated group championed his work, raised funding, and arranged his first meetings with figures such as David Lloyd George and – crucially – Arthur Balfour.

And above all, Manchester’s significance lies in the impact it had on Weizmann himself. In the wake of the savage Kishinev pogroms, many of Zionism’s founding figures travelled directly to Palestine – among them Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1904) and David Ben-Gurion (1906) – and their early experiences there shaped the more uncompromising stances they would later adopt toward Israel and its place among the nations. Weizmann’s long sojourn in Manchester, by contrast, made him far more nuanced.

He remained a devoted Zionist, unafraid to storm into the highest offices of the British Mandate if he sensed injustice towards the Jews of the Yishuv. Yet Manchester simultaneously anchored his centrism and liberal instincts. The city’s progressive intellectual climate – animated by ideas of free trade, feminism, and anti-slavery reform that had taken root there for decades – was the world Weizmann inhabited. It was likely this environment that sharpened his disagreements with Jabotinsky and grounded his insistence that the Jewish people sought “neither to rule nor be ruled.” Those convictions would stay with him for life.

This is precisely why Manchester must no longer remain the Cinderella of the Zionist story. A century may have passed, but the optimism and moral confidence of Manchester’s progressive heritage endure. This spirit was evident last month in the solidarity shown by many local Mancunians after the tragedy of Yom Kippur. It was also powerfully displayed at a vigil in central Manchester back in 2017, held in the wake of another appalling terror attack – on the arena. There, the crowd spontaneously broke into the quintessentially Mancunian anthem, Oasis’s Don’t Look Back in Anger.

Moments like these remind us to resist viewing the city solely through the lens of a contemporary Britain that can feel increasingly hostile to Jews. Instead, they invite us to look back with pride – at the city that shaped Weizmann and, in its own way, helped shape Jewish history.

Aaron Seitler is an educator living in Jerusalem. He studied History at UCL, made Aliyah, and served as a paratrooper in the IDF. He teaches Jewish philosophy and Tanach and writes on Jewish thought