The Balkind Boys  

Twenty-five years after Reb Yonah Balkind’s passing and thousands of students later, his legacy is preserved in the next generation

Mr. Kohn and Mr. Liefman grew up about 15 minutes’ walk away, in Cheetham or Hightown — an inner-city area of Manchester — which was then bursting with descendents of Jewish immigrants. Today, Arab candy shops, Turkish barbers, and imitation brand-name knock-off clothiers line Cheetham Hill Road, while a multiethnic community lives in the crowded housing. Eight mosques are listed in those couple of square miles. But back then, there was the Warshawer shul, the Ustreicher shul, the Chevra Kaddisha shul opposite the Jewish hospital, the Elm Street shul, the Chevra Tehillim shul, the Bishops Street shul, and many other little places where the men davened before a hard day’s work in the city’s textile trade, others stopping in only as “Kaddish zoggers” or on Shabbos.

“My father davened with Rebbi Balkind in the Warshawer shul on Bell Street, there next to the shecht-house, where I used to have to take my mother’s chickens. Oy, the schmeck! If you could, you walked on the other side of the road,” Mr. Kohn reminisces of those days 60 years ago. “The Rebbi’s house, at the time I went to cheder, was at 38 Bignor Street. Until today, I sometimes stop when I drive by. I sit there for five minutes, just for the memories.”