Shneur Odze

Shneur Zalman Odze, born 3 March 1981, is an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and UK Independence Party (UKIP) politician who was the UKIP candidate in the Greater Manchester mayoral election, 2017. He is a rabbi in Salford. He got 10,583 votes in the Mayoral election, 1.87% of the vote, coming sixth.

Odze was a Conservative councillor for New River ward of Hackney from 2002 until he resigned in 2004. He was a Conservative candidate in the Bury Metropolitan Borough Council election in 2004 and 2006 and then in the Salford City Council election, 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2012 but stood for UKIP in the Salford City Council election, 2014.

He was a UKIP candidate for the North West England in the European Election 2014. During the campaign, he declined to shake hands with female voters due to his religious beliefs, which prohibit physical contact with any woman other than his wife. One of the party's regional organisers resigned in protest. Odze was fourth on the UKIP party list; three were elected.

In 2014 he joined with other Israelis to travel to Bradford in protest after George Galloway declared the city an "Israel-free zone".

Odze was unsuccessful in his bid for the UKIP nomination for London mayoral election, 2016. At the time he declared that he was "a Londoner born, bred, and schooled". He was an elected public governor of the University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust.

Odze helped to set up the "Friends of Israel in UKIP", the logo of which featured a pound sign in the centre of a star of David. When it was pointed out that linking Jews and money had unfortunate connotations, Odze said this was more oversight than conspiracy. He condemned the party's policy against religious slaughter as "wrong", and vowed to work to overturn it. He is said to be a close confidant of Nigel Farage and Paul Nuttall.

In 2017 he burned a Hebrew-English Bible, published by the Society for Distributing Hebrew Scriptures, which had been placed in a synagogue without permission on the eve of Passover. Odze initially denied on social media that this event had taken place. He subsequently apologised following a Daily Mail article showing a Twitter post he had made which included a photograph of the book on fire. At a Manchester hustings he was criticised by Jane Brophy, the Liberal Democrat candidate because he refused to shake her hand. She said he should treat women and men equally.

Personal life