15. The Jews in Ireland

The earliest reference to the coming of Jews to Ireland is found in the Annals of Inishfallen for 1079: 'Five Jews came over sea with gifts to Tairdelbach and they were sent back again over sea.' The Tairdelbach mentioned was Turlough O'Brien (1009-1086) who was King of Munster and grandson of Brian Boru. The five Jews who are said to have come to our shores may have been merchants who had come from France. It is probable that other Jewish traders came to the country during the following centuries and that some of them settled in Ireland. It is possible that some victims of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492) and Portugal (1496) may have fled to Ireland. But if so, they do not seem to have settled permanently in the country.

A number of Sephardi Jews (i.e. Jews whose ancestors came from Spain and Portugal) may have lived in Dublin during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These would seem to have been mostly of the wealthy merchant class. In about the year 1660 there was a Jewish prayer room in Crane Lane, opposite Dublin Castle. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, as a result of the wars in Europe, many poor Jews fled from Germany and Poland to England. Some of these Ashkenazi Jews (i.e. Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe) travelled on to Ireland where they became engaged in peddling and in petty trade. They worshipped with their Sephardi co-religionists in the synagogue in Crane Lane. In 1718 the Jewish community leased a plot as a cemetery at Ballybough near Fairview, in Dublin. It is estimated that in 1745 there were about 200 Jews living in Ireland. In the 1760s the synagogue was moved from Crane Lane to Marlborough Green, near the site of the present Custom House. {163} 164

From the 1780s the Jewish population of Dublin declined due to the political unrest that was common in the Ireland of that time, to trade depression, intermarriage, conversion etc. Many Jews left for England or for America. In 1790, for lack of worshippers, the Marlborough synagogue closed down.

An Expanding Community

After the Napoleonic Wars, from about 1820 onwards, a number of Ashkenazi Jews, mainly from Germany, Poland and Holland arrived in Ireland. Having worshipped for some years in a private house, the congregation acquired a premises in 12 Mary's Abbey, off Capel St in 1836. According to the 1861 census, there were 393 Jews in Ireland in that year. Up to 1880 the number of Jews in the country never exceeded 350.

The Jews who arrived in Ireland in the early part of the nineteenth century had one thing in common with the Catholic population. Both communities were deprived of certain civil rights, and they were excluded from certain areas of public life. Daniel O'Connell, who struggled to gain Catholic Emancipation, supported a Bill for the Emancipation of the Jews which passed the House of Commons, but which was rejected by the Lords in 1831. Writing to a Jewish leader in England at this time O'Connell said: '... (Ireland) is the only Christian country that I know of unsullied by any one act of persecution against the Jews'. The Jews of Dublin, and especially wealthy Jews in England and in America, gave generous support to the Irish people during the Famine of 1854-57.

Between 1881 and 1901 there was a huge increase in the number of Jews in Dublin. Following the pogroms in Russia in 1881 and in the succeeding years, and frustrated by laws that discriminated against the Jews, many Jews fled the Russian territories. Some of these refugees came to the West and a number of them, mainly Lithuanians, settled in Ireland. It is estimated that between 1881 and 1910 some 2,000 Jews came to this country. Some of the newcomers joined the established communities in Dublin, while others made their homes in Belfast, Cork, {165} Limerick, Waterford, Derry and Dundalk. Many of them made a living as drapers, hawkers, tailors and general dealers. By 1901 there were over 2,000 Jews in Dublin, over 700 in Belfast, 359 in Cork, and 171 in Limerick. The Jewish population of the whole of Ireland numbered 3,898.

The newly arrived Jews who settled in Dublin lived mainly in the Portobello district of the South Circular Road. The area became known to the locals as 'Little Jerusalem'. In 1892, in response to this population shift, and to accommodate the increased Jewish community, the synagogue in Mary's Abbey was closed and a bigger one opened in Adelaide Road, quite near to the South Circular Road. Rabbi S. Herman Adler, Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, consecrated the new synagogue. On that occasion he said: 'It is said that Ireland is the only country in the world which cannot be charged with persecuting the Jews.' After the 1940s many Jews moved to the suburbs of Terenure and Rathfarnham. In 1946 the Jewish population of the whole of Ireland was 5,381. Of these 3,907 lived in the Republic, and 1,474 in Northern Ireland. These 1946 figures represent the highest number of Jews ever recorded in the country.

Anti-Semitism in Ireland

Many of the Jews who settled in Dublin in the early 1880s became pedlars and traders. Some shopkeepers saw them as a threat to their business, and in 1886 placards urging the citizens to have no dealings with the newcomers were posted all over Dublin, and anti-Jewish letters appeared in newspapers. However, the newspapers condemned the movement, and the anti-Jewish protest soon came to an end. On Easter Sunday 1884 a crowd attacked the home of a Jew in Limerick. Stones were thrown through the window and the wife and child of the owner of the house were hurt. The police intervened and two of the ringleaders of the attack were sentenced to a month's imprisonment with hard labour. In 1894 there was a minor anti-Jewish disturbance in Cork. But again, the ringleaders were imprisoned.

By far the most notorious expression of anti-Jewish feeling {166} occurred in Limerick, a city which had 130 Jewish inhabitants in 1896. Early in 1904 Fr John Creagh, a Redemptorist, preached two sermons to the members of the Archconfraternity of the Holy Family in which he vehemently attacked the Jews of the city, condemning especially the way in which they went as pedlars from door to door persuading people to buy goods at exorbitant prices. He urged his hearers to have no commercial dealings with Jews. The result was that the Jews became the victims of a boycott which lasted for two years. Many of them were pauperised, and about eighty members of the community left the city and settled in Cork or emigrated. The number of Jews who remained in Limerick may have been less than forty. During the conflict Michael Davitt, founder of the Land League, and John Redmond, leader of the Home Rule Party, spoke out in defence of the Jews. On the other hand, Arthur Griffith's paper, The United Irishman, was on the side of Fr Creagh. In 1906, Fr Creagh, having finished one term as director of the Archconfraternity, departed for the Redemptorists' new missions in the Philippines. In the 1940s there was another manifestation of anti-Judaism, when the members of Maria Duce, a movement that was founded by Fr Denis Fahey in 1945. Fr Fahey was convinced that the Jews were in league with Freemasons and communists, and that together they planned a world conspiracy. He claimed that the Jews were behind Bolshevism in Russia, and that the Jews and the Freemasons controlled the United States, the United Nations and international business. He also called into question the loyalty of Irish Jews to the Irish State. Father Fahey's movement, which never had a great following, declined steadily in the 1950s and petered out in the 1960s.

The Recent Past

During the Second World War, when European Jews were being rounded up and sent to the Nazi death camps, the Irish government was less than generous in opening the country's doors to Jewish refugees. The then Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, who, over the years had a good relationship with the Dublin Jewish {167} community leaders, and especially with Dr Isaac Herzog, the Chief Rabbi, tried to respond to requests to save individual Jews who were in danger of being sent to the gas chambers. But he did not authorise the kind of distribution of Irish passports that would have helped many Jews to escape. The number of Jews allowed into Ireland during the war years may have been as few as sixty. In 1995, on the occasion of an official ceremony to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen and to honour the memory of the six million European Jews who died in the Holocaust, the Fine Gael TD Alan Shatter, who is Jewish, stated that there never had been an official expression of regret from any Irish government at the state's refusal to admit into Ireland many Jews who were fleeing from Nazi terror. In spite of de Valera's failure to manifest the magnanimity that the Jews might have expected of him during the Nazi period, the Jewish community continued to hold him in high esteem. In 1963, when he was President, the Irish Jewish community decided to honour him by planting a forest of 10,000 trees in Israel as a mark of recognition of his work for peace and freedom, especially the freedom of small nations. On that occasion tributes were paid to de Valera as a stalwart well-wisher of Jewry and of the Jewish State. However, many Jews throughout the world, and many others as well, who know nothing about de Valera's friendship with and support of the Jews, or about the Jewish tributes that were paid to him, will know about his visit to the German Embassy in May 1945 to express his condolences on the death of Hitler. That visit shocked many people, especially Jews, in many parts of the world at the time, and it has continued to puzzle people ever since.

In modern Ireland, Jews have made significant contributions to the cultural, professional and political life of the country. The large number of Jews who have been involved in the medical and legal professions is out of all proportion to the number of Jews in the country. The first Jew to make an impact on the political scene was Robert Briscoe, who was elected as a TD in 1927, and who continued to serve in Dail fiireann until 1965. He was {168} elected Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1956, and he held that position for a second time in 1961-62. His son, Ben, succeeded him in Dail fiireann in 1965, and he too became Lord Mayor of Dublin, having been elected in 1988. In the 1992 general election three Jews were elected to the Dail. These were Ben Briscoe (Fianna Fail), Mervyn Taylor (Labour) and Alan Shatter (Fine Gael).

The 2002 national census revealed that for the first time since 1946 there was a small increase in the Jewish population of the Irish Republic. According to that census there were 1790 Jews in the Republic, of whom 1200 lived in Dublin. Among the many foreign-born people who have come to Ireland in recent years there have been a number of Jews who have taken up permanent residence here, or who are on short-to-medium contracts with different companies. Nevertheless, the fact remains that many young Jewish people, often with a view to meeting a Jewish spouse, move to Israel or to cities in England and America that have large Jewish communities. It is clear that such departures, if continued, must inevitably lead to a decline in the growth rate of the already small number of Irish Jews.