About Jewishness

The history of the Jews in Ireland extends back nearly a thousand years. Although the Jewish community has always been small in numbers (1,930 in the Republic of Ireland according to the 2006 census), it has generally been well-accepted into Irish life.

Early history
The earliest reference to the Jews in Ireland was in the year 1079. The Annals of Inisfallen record "Five Jews came from over sea with gifts to Toirdelbach [king of Munster], and they were sent back again over sea". They were probably merchants from Normandy. Toirdelbach was the grandson of Brian Boru a previous High King of Ireland.
No further reference is found until nearly a century later in the reign of Henry II of England. That monarch, fearful lest an independent kingdom should be established in Ireland, prohibited a proposed expedition there. Strongbow, however, went in defiance of the king's orders and, as a result, his estates were confiscated. In his venture Strongbow seems to have been assisted financially by a Jew; for under the date of 1170 the following record occurs: "Josce Jew of Gloucester owes 100 shillings for an amerciament for the moneys which he lent to those who against the king's prohibition went over to Ireland".
By 1232, there was probably a Jewish community in Ireland, as a grant of July 28, 1232 by King Henry III to Peter de Rivel gives him the office of Treasurer and Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, the king's ports and coast, and also "the custody of the King's Judaism in Ireland". This grant contains the additional instruction that "all Jews in Ireland shall be intentive and respondent to Peter as their keeper in all things touching the king". The Jews of this period probably resided in or near Dublin. In the Dublin White Book of 1241, there is a grant of land containing various prohibitions against its sale or disposition by the grantee. Part of the prohibition reads "vel in Judaismo ponere". The last mention of Jews in the "Calendar of Documents Relating to Ireland" appears about 1286. When the expulsion from England took place (1290), the Irish Jews had doubtless to go as well.
A permanent settlement of Jews was established, however, in the late fifteenth century. Following their expulsion from Portugal in 1496, some of these Marrano Jews settled on Ireland's south coast. One of them, William Annyas, was elected as mayor of Youghal, County Cork, in 1555, there was also Francis Annyas (Ãnes) a three time Mayor of Youghal in 1569, 1576 and 1581. Ireland's first synagogue was founded in 1660 near Dublin Castle, and the first Jewish cemetery was founded in the early eighteenth century in the Fairview district of Dublin, where there was a small Jewish colony.

18th and 19th century
In December, 1714, the Irish philosopher John Toland issued a pamphlet entitled Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland. In 1746 a bill was introduced in the "for naturalising persons professing the Jewish religion in Ireland". This was the first reference to Jews in the House of Commons up to this time. Another was introduced in the following year, agreed to without amendment and presented to the Lord Lieutenant to be transmitted to England but it never received the royal assent. These Irish bills, however, had one very important result; namely, the formation of the Committee of Diligence, which was organized by British Jews at this time to watch the progress of the measure. This ultimately led to the organisation of the Board of Deputies, an important body which has continued in existence to the present time. Jews were expressly excepted from the benefit of the Irish Naturalisation Act of 1783. The exceptions in the Naturalisation Act of 1783 were abolished in 1846. The Irish Marriage Act of 1844 expressly made provision for marriages according to Jewish rites.
Daniel O'Connell is best known for the campaign for Catholic Emancipation; he also supported similar efforts for Jews. In 1846, at his insistence, the British law "De Judaismo", which prescribed a special dress for Jews, was repealed. O’Connell said: "Ireland has claims on your ancient race, it is the only country that I know of unsullied by any one act of ".
Many Irish starved during the Great Hunger. Many Jews helped and organized and gave generously towards Famine relief. A Dublin newspaper, commenting in 1850, pointed out that Baron Lionel de Rothschild and his family had, “...contributed during the Irish famine of 1847 ... a sum far beyond the joint contributions of the Devonshires, and Herefords, Lansdownes, Fitzwilliams and Herberts, who annually drew so many times that amount from their Irish estates.”
Ireland's Jews were cityfolk, business people, professionals, merchants—people who bought their food instead of growing it.
In 1874, Lewis Wormser Harris was elected to Dublin Corporation as Alderman for South Dock Ward. Two years later he was elected as Lord Mayor of Dublin, but died August 1, 1876 before he took office.

Twentieth century
There was an increase in Jewish immigration to Ireland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1871, the Jewish population of Ireland was 258; by 1881, it had risen to 453. Most of the immigration up to this time had come from England or Germany. In the wake of the pogroms there was increased immigration, mostly from Eastern Europe (in particular Lithuania). By 1901, there were an estimated 3,771 Jews in Ireland, over half of them (2,200) residing in Dublin; and by 1904, the total Jewish population had reached an estimated 4,800. New synagogues and schools were established to cater for the immigrants, many of whom established shops and other businesses. Many of the following generation became prominent in business, academic, political and sporting circles.
The Jewish population of Ireland reached around 5,500 in the late 1940s, but has since (2008) declined to around 2,000, mainly through emigration to larger Jewish communities such as those in the United States, England and Israel. The Republic of Ireland currently has four synagogues: three in Dublin, one in Cork. There is a further synagogue in Belfast in Northern Ireland.

Limerick Pogrom
The boycott in Limerick in the first decade of the twentieth century is known as the Limerick Pogrom, and caused many Jews to leave the city. It was instigated by an influential intolerant Catholic priest, Fr. John Creagh of the Redemptorist Order. A teenager, John Raleigh, was arrested by the British and briefly imprisoned for attacking the Jews' rebbe, but returned home to a welcoming throng. Limerick's Jews fled. Many went to Cork, where trans-Atlantic passenger ships docked at Cobh. They intended to travel to America. The people of Cork welcomed them into their homes. Church halls were opened to feed and house the refugees. As a result many remained. Gerald Goldberg, a son of this migration, became Lord Mayor of Cork.
The boycott was condemned by many in Ireland, among them the influential in his paper All Ireland Review, depicting Jews and Irish as "brothers in a common struggle". The Land Leaguer Michael Davitt (author of The True Story of Anti-Semitic Persecutions in Russia), in the Freeman's Journal, attacked those who had participated in the riots and visited homes of Jewish victims in Limerick. His friend, Corkman William O'Brien MP, leader of the United Irish League and editor of the Irish People, had a Jewish wife, Sophie Raffalovic.
Father Creagh was moved by his superiors initially to Belfast and then to an island in the Pacific Ocean. In 1914 he was promoted by the Pope to be Vicar Apostolic of Kimberley, Western Australia, a position he held until 1922. He died in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1947.
Joe Briscoe, son of Robert Briscoe, the Dublin Jewish politician, describes the Limerick episode as “an aberration in an otherwise almost perfect history of Ireland and its treatment of the Jews”. Robert Briscoe was a prominent member of the IRA during the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. He was sent by Michael Collins to Germany in 1920 to be the chief agent for procuring arms for the IRA. Briscoe proved to be highly successful at this mission and arms arrived into Ireland in spite of the British blockade.

Blueshirts
The Army Comrades Association (ACA), or Blueshirts, established in 1932, were the Irish equivalent of Mussolini's Blackshirts, and though they professed themselves as Republican, had a similar anti-Semitic agenda to Mosley's Blackshirts. The following year they became part of the new Fine Gael party. They were opposed by most Republicans (including Fianna Fáil and the IRA) and left-wingers (including the Labour Party and trade-unionists). Blueshirt meetings regularly ended in riots as protesters drowned out the speakers or fought with the attendees. Street fights between them and members of the IRA resulted in serious injuries. Gerald Goldberg, who was born in Cork and later served as a Fianna Fáil Lord Mayor of Cork, related an incident on the RTÉ documentary A Corkman, an Irishman and a Jew. When he was a student at UCC he rose to speak at a debate, the auditor silenced him, as he was a "foreigner" and only "Irishmen" were permitted to speak. He left, and although he wished to forget the incident, other students led by the son of the late Sinn Féin Lord Mayor, Tomás Mac Curtain, insisted that he return. The hall was filled with Mac Curtain supporters from the student membership of the IRA. The auditor was silenced and Gerald Goldberg made his speech. The Blueshirt Movement disintegrated after the extreme views of its leader became an embarrassment to more moderate members of Fine Gael.

Irish Government
The original Irish Constitution of 1937 specifically gave constitutional protection to Jews. This was considered to be a necessary component to the constitution by De Valera because of the treatment of Jews elsewhere in Europe at the time. The Blueshirts were suppressed by the government. In Rome, T.J. Kiernan, the Irish Minister to the Vatican, and his wife, Delia Murphy (a noted traditional ballad singer), worked with the Irish priest Hugh O'Flaherty to save many Jews and escaped prisoners of war. Jews conducted religious services in the church of of the ‘Collegium Hiberniae Dominicanae’, which had Irish diplomatic protection.
The reference to the Jewish Congregations in the Irish Constitution was removed in 1973 with the Fifth Amendment. The same amendment removed the 'special position' of the Catholic Church, as well as references to the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church, the Religious Society of Friends.
Two Irish Jews, Esther Steinberg and her infant son, are known to have been killed during the Holocaust, which otherwise did not substantially directly affect the Jews actually living in Ireland. The Wannsee Conference listed the 4,000 Jews of Ireland to be among those marked for killing in the Shoah.

Belfast. Birthplace of Israeli president Chaim Herzog (1918-1997)

Northern Ireland
About ten thousand unaccompanied children aged between three and seventeen from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, were permitted entry into the United Kingdom without visas. Some of these children were sent to Northern Ireland. Many of them were looked after by foster parents but others went to the Millisle Refugee Farm (Magill's Farm, on the Woburn Road) which took refugees from May 1938 until its closure in 1948.

Ireland's behaviour towards Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust was, in the later words of Justice Minister Michael McDowell "antipathetic, hostile and unfeeling". Dr Mervyn O'Driscoll of University College Cork reported on the unofficial and official barriers that prevented Jews from finding refuge in Ireland: "Although overt anti-Semitism was untypical, the Irish were indifferent to the Nazi persecution of the Jews and those fleeing the third Reich."

World War II and aftermath
The state was nominally neutral during World War II, known within the Republic of Ireland as "The Emergency" although it is estimated that about 100,000 men from Ireland took part on the side of the Allies, while a handful may have taken the part of their opponents.
There was some domestic anti-Jewish sentiment during World War II, most notably expressed in a notorious speech to the Dáil in 1943, when newly-elected independent T.D. Oliver J. Flanagan advocated "routing the Jews out of the country". On the other hand Henning Thomsen, the German chargé d'affaires officially complained of press commentaries. In February 1939, he protested against the Bishop of Galway who had issued a pastoral letter, along similar lines, accusing Germany of
“"violence, lying, murder and the condemning of other races and peoples".”
There was some official indifference from the political establishment to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust during and after the war. This indifference would later be described by Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform Michael McDowell as being "antipathetic, hostile and unfeeling". Dr. Mervyn O'Driscoll of reported on the unofficial and official barriers that prevented Jews from finding refuge in Ireland although the barriers have been down ever since:
“Although overt anti-Semitism was not typical, the southern Irish were indifferent to the Nazi persecution of the Jews and those fleeing the third Reich....A successful applicant in 1938 was typically wealthy, middle-aged or elderly, single from Austria, Roman Catholic and desiring to retire in peace to Ireland and not engage in employment. Only a few Viennese bankers and industrialists met the strict criterion of being Catholic, although possibly of Jewish descent, capable of supporting themselves comfortably without involvement in the economic life of the country."
Post-war, Jewish groups had great difficulty in getting refugee status for Jewish children, whilst at the same time, a plan to bring over four hundred Catholic Children from the Rhineland encountered no difficulties. The Department of Justice explained in 1948 that:
“It has always been the policy of the Minister for Justice to restrict the admission of Jewish aliens, for the reason that any substantial increase in our Jewish population might give rise to an anti-Semitic problem.”
However, de Valera over-ruled the Department of Justice and the one hundred and fifty refugee Jewish children were brought to Ireland in 1948. Earlier, in 1946, one hundred Jewish children from Poland were bought to Clonyn Castle in County Meath by a London Jewish charity. In 1952 he again had to overrule the Department of Justice to admit five Orthodox families who were fleeing the Communists. In 1966, the Dublin Jewish community arranged the planting and dedication of the Éamon de Valera Forest in Israel, near Nazareth, in recognition of his consistent support for Ireland's Jews.
In 2006 Tesco, a British supermarket chain, had to apologise for selling the discredited anti Jewish book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in its stores in Britain and Ireland. Sheikh Dr Shaheed Satardien, head of the Muslim Council of Ireland, said this was effectively "polluting the minds of impressionable young [Islamic] people with hate and anger towards the Jewish community".
William Cosgrave while President of the Executive Council of the Free State government notably turned down a plea for asylum in Ireland for Leon Trotsky while in exile. The request was made by the trade union leader William X. O'Brien in 1930. Cosgrave told O'Brien
Told him [O'Brien] "I could see no reason why Trotsky should be considered by us. Russian bonds had been practically confiscated. He said there was to be consideration of them. I said it was not by Trotsky, whose policy was the reverse. I asked his nationality. Reply Jew. They were against religion (he said that was modified). I said not by Trotsky. He said he had hoped there would be an asylum here as in England for all. I agreed that under normal conditions, which we had not here, that would be allright. But we had no touch with this man or his Government, nor did they interest themselves in us in his 'day'."