Lee Croft

The New Hebrew Congregation used to say that their Shul in Campo Lane was built and consecrated in 1914. However, that was the end of an almost twelve year saga. No Shul was built with more courage and fewer assets. The old prayer rooms, bizarrely sited over a pork butchers in West Bar lacked all the amenities save an atmosphere of devotion.

The snobs at North Church Street looked down their noses at the Chevra, at the greeners who had not learned to do things the English way. They wagged their heads when they heard how badly the West Bar Shul was in debt and many of them forgot that they too had only crossed the Baltic after the pogroms of 1891.

It was unthinkable and ridiculous that the Chevra should decide to build a Shul, but in 1903 a Committee with S. Cohen as Chairman and J. Reinchreiber as Secretary actually found a piece of land next to the bit of a farm at Lee Croft where the Jews bought their milk for making kez. They purchased the land and in the enthusiasm of the transaction even raised the £50 to pay for it. It took seven more years to raise all the necessary funds. 

H. L. Brown who was chosen to open the new building presented a magnificent pillared gateway which can now be seen in the courtyard of the Centre fixed into Psalter Synagogue. In 1917, during his pastoral visit to Sheffield, the Chief Rabbi of the Jews, Dr J H. Hertz preached in the Old Synagogue, in North Church Street, and in the afternoon in the new one in Lee Croft. Large congregations were attracted by his presence and the visit was a great success.

(Source: David Brown, ‘Notes on the Near-Gone Years’, p. 15, Sheffield Jewish Journal, No. 50, Tricentenary Edition, 1956)