Manchester Jewish Museum launches exhibition exploring life and work of the Rambam
'Maimonides from Scratch' celebrates legacy of revered Sephardic intellectual giant Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204)
Manchester Jewish Museum is hosting a temporary exhibition on the life and work of Maimonides, also known as the Rambam – one of the most important figures in the history of Torah scholarship.
Running from Wednesday 11 February, “Maimonides from Scratch” is the culmination of more than two years of work in collaboration with the museum, thirty Year 6 pupils at King David School and a large team of researchers from Southampton and Cambridge, animators, artists, and the Cairo Genizah Research Unit.
A polymath rabbi, philosopher, and physician born in 12th-century Córdoba (present-day Spain), during the course of his life, the Rambam travelled across the Mediterranean, from Fez (Morocco) to Fustat (Egypt).
His thinking was shaped by Greek, Jewish, and Islamic cultures and intellectual traditions.
The theme of “Maimonides from Scratch” centres on a series of workshops held at Manchester Jewish Museum and in Marseille with groups of schoolchildren, which invited creative responses to Maimonides’ life and ideas through stop-motion animation, storyboarding, and graphic novel design.
The project, which also culminated in a short film ‘Maimonides the Healer’, explores how key themes from his life – movement, language, and encounter – connect to the experiences of Jewish communities today and encouraged students to learn from the Genizah (archive), where many of his documents were preserved, and study his use of Judeo-Arabic.
The exhibition is based on an original idea and research by Sami Everett, who told Jewish News that the Rambam’s name “signifies the confluence of languages—particularly Arabic and Hebrew—and philosophies notably Ancient Greek and Halakhic. His life was complex moving through Al Andalusia, Morocco, Egypt and the holy land. He was the perfect figure to get students from the King David Jewish school to think about their identification with Jewish life and science today.”
Commenting on their workshop, one student said: “Since the war, Muslims and Jews are kind of enemies but I knew that in the past they were friends”, with volunteers praising Maimonides from Scratch for being “not freighted with stereotypes, not patronising or full of assumptions, actually weird and interesting”.
It was curated by researchers Anoushka Alexander-Rose, Anastasia Badder, Eliaou Balouka, Sami Everett, and Sonya Nevin.
- The exhibition runs from Wednesday, 11 February to Wednesday 24 June 2026.
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