The heritage tours pay tribute to significant members of Bradford’s Jewish community, past and present. They include:

  • Entrepreneur Jonathan Silver, who displayed early business skills at Bradford Grammar School, spending lunchbreaks in auction rooms buying and selling furniture. He went on to buy Salts Mill and transformed it into retail and commercial units and an art gallery, now the centrepiece of Saltaire as a World Heritage Site.
  • Sir Jacob Behrens, the first textile export merchant in Bradford, whose family owned SL Behrens in Little Germany. Arriving from Germany in 1834, he established a cloth-finishing business in Leeds then moved to Bradford in 1838. He was president of Chamber of Commerce and pioneered educational reform, founding Bradford High School which later became Bradford Grammar School. He campaigned for more textile training within the city and supported the opening of the new Technical School in 1882. He was knighted by Queen Victoria for services to textiles.
  • Actor George Layton, who started at the Bradford Civic and went on to be a TV star, appearing in such shows as Z Cars, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum and EastEnders. He has written three books, The Trick, The Fib and The Swap, about growing up in a northern town. A former Belle Vue Boys School pupil, he received an honorary degree from the University of Bradford in 2000.
  • David Berglas, former president of the Magic Circle and one of the first magicians on British television in the 1950s. David’s family fled Nazi Germany in 1933. In 1939 he was recruited by US intelligence to decode messages. Discharged from the US Army in 1947, he came to Bradford Technical College to study textiles with a view to joining the family business, Berglas Brothers, of Crown Point Mills in Wyke. Instead, he was introduced to magic by chance. Hiring costumes from a Bradford magic shop for a student event, he was invited to a Bradford Magical Society meeting. He went on to perform as a magician around the world and was an adviser on James Bond and Hammer Horror films.
  • Bridge champion Boris Schapiro, who secured his first world title in 1929 and his final one 66 years later. Born in Latvia, Boris moved to St Petersburg with his family, who ran an international horse-dealing business, and when their comfortable lifestyle was shattered by the Russian Revolution, they escaped in a cattle truck. Boris studied textiles at Bradford Technical College in the 1920s and served in the Army Intelligence Corps during the war. When the family business turned to meat, Boris spent his time between visiting butchers’ shops playing bridge. He turned out to be a master, winning his first world title in 1932. He was a member of the British team that won the European Team Championships four times from 1948 and Britain’s only World Open Team title, in 1955, and he won the Gold Cup a record 11 times – the last time in 1998, aged 89. He taught actor Omar Sharif how to play bridge like a master, during a break from filming Lawrence Of Arabia.