In the wake of
pogroms in the Russian Empire, there was increased Jewish immigration to Ireland, 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. By 1904, the total Jewish population was an estimated 4,800 people. New synagogues and schools were established to cater to the immigrants, many of whom established shops and other businesses. Many of the subsequent generations became prominent in business, academic, political, and sporting circles. On 10 September 1908 Irish Jews founded the "Judeo-Irish Home Rule Association" to advocate for
Home rule in Ireland. It held its inaugural meeting at the
Mansion House, Dublin, an occasion facilitated by Dublin Councillor Mendal Altman. The association pledged itself to "full grant of self-government, such as accepted by the
Irish Parliamentary Party, to foster Irish industries and in general to promote the welfare and prosperity of Ireland". The Republic of Ireland currently has two synagogues in Dublin, one Orthodox, one reform. There is a further synagogue in Belfast in
Northern Ireland. The synagogue in Cork closed in 2016, although a new Reform Jewish community started after the closure - currently without a synagogue building. From 1925 to 2002, a Jewish
Scout Group operated in Dublin, the 16th Dublin, with its own campsite in
Powerscourt Estate for much of that period. This is only Jewish Scout campsite to have existed in the UK or Ireland. One of the Scout Groups leaders Maurice "Morrie" Gordon was thought on his retirement to be the longest serving Jewish Scout leader in the world. He was awarded the Silver Elk, the highest award of the
Scout Association of Ireland.
Limerick Boycott The economic boycott waged against the small Jewish community in
Limerick City in the first decade of the 20th century is known as the
Limerick Boycott (and sometimes known as the Limerick Pogrom) and caused many Jews to leave the city. It was instigated by an influential
Redemptorist priest, Father
John Creagh who called for a boycott during a sermon in January 1904. A teenager, John Raleigh, was arrested by the police and imprisoned for a month for attacking Rabbi Elias Levin, the community's rabbi, but returned home to a welcoming throng. According to an
RIC report, 5 Jewish families left Limerick "owing directly to the agitation" and 26 families remained. Some went to
Cork, where trans-Atlantic passenger ships docked at
Cobh (then known as Queenstown). They intended to travel to
America.
Gerald Goldberg, a son of this migration, became
Lord Mayor of Cork in 1977. In 1970, Goldberg characterized it as a "near genocide perpetrated … against some 150 defenceless Jewish men, women and children" and that Jews did not "need a dictionary to define a pogrom". , Limerick - now known to be Elsa Reininger, who committed suicide, rather than being returned to Austria in 1938 The boycott was condemned by many in Ireland, among which was the influential
Standish O'Grady in his paper
All Ireland Review, depicting Jews and Irish as "brothers in a common struggle", though using language differentiating between the two. 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". Since 1983, several commentators have questioned the traditional narrative of the event, and especially whether the event's description as a
pogrom is appropriate. Historian
Dermot Keogh sympathised with the use of the term by the Jews who experienced the event, and respected its use by subsequent writers, but preferred the term "boycott". Creagh's anti-Semitic campaign, while virulent, did not result in the murder of any member of Limerick's Jewish community. The 1911 census records that, not only were 13 of the remaining 26 families still resident in Limerick six years later but that 9 new Jewish families had joined them. The Jewish population numbered 122 persons in 1911 as opposed to 171 in 1901. This had declined to just 30 by 1926.
War of Independence Two Irish Jews supported the
Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the
First Dail during the
Irish War of Independence.
Michael Noyk was a Lithuanian-born solicitor who became famous for defending captured
Irish Republicans such as
Sean MacEoin.
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 in Ireland in spite of the British blockade. Briscoe was also involved later in the Israeli independence movement and advised
Menachem Begin to disband the
Irgun militia, to prevent a civil war among the Israelis afterwards, after learning from the Irish struggle. Years later, when his son
Ben Briscoe visited Israel in 1974, he recalled that Begin had fond memories of his role. Michael Collins also hid in a Jewish home and disguised himself in Jewish attire to hide from the British authorities at one point and even cursed at the
Black and Tans in
Yiddish.
Irish Free State Senate In an effort to provide minority communities with political representation in parliament (as was the case with minority Christian denominations)
Ellen Cuffe (Countess of Desart), a member of the Jewish community, was appointed for a twelve-year term by
W. T. Cosgrave to the
Irish Senate in 1922. She sat as an independent member until her death in 1933. She was also an advocate for the Irish language and served as President of the
Gaelic League.
Irish Constitution The Irish Constitution of 1937 specifically gave constitutional protection to Jews. This was considered to be a necessary component to the constitution by
Éamon de Valera because of the treatment of Jews elsewhere in Europe at the time. 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, and the Religious Society of Friends.
Kindertransport to Northern Ireland A committee organized the
Kindertransport. About ten thousand unaccompanied children aged between three and seventeen from
Germany and
Czechoslovakia were permitted entry into the United Kingdom without visas in 1939. 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.
World War II and aftermath The Irish envoy to Berlin,
Charles Bewley, appointed in 1933, became an admirer of
Hitler and National Socialism. His reports contained incorrect information on the treatment of Jews in Germany, and he was against allowing Jews to move to Ireland. After being reprimanded by Dublin, he was dismissed in 1939. The Irish state was officially neutral during
World War II, known in Ireland as "
The Emergency", although it is estimated that about 100,000 men from the state took part on the side of the Allies. 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
San Clemente of the 'Collegium Hiberniae Dominicanae', which had Irish
diplomatic protection. 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
TD 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
University College Cork reported on the unofficial and official barriers that prevented Jews from finding refuge in Ireland although the barriers have been down ever since: Two Irish Jews,
Ettie Steinberg and her infant son, are known to have been murdered in the Holocaust, which otherwise did not substantially directly affect the Jews actually living in Ireland. At least 6 Jews from Ireland are known to have been murdered in the Shoah. The
Wannsee Conference listed the 4,000 Jews of Ireland to be among those marked for killing in the Holocaust. Post-war, Jewish groups had great difficulty in getting refugee status for Jewish children, whereas the
Irish Red Cross had no difficulties with
Operation Shamrock, which brought over 500 Christian children, mainly from the Rhineland. The Department of Justice explained in 1948 that: However, de Valera overruled the Department of Justice and the 150 refugee Jewish children were brought to Ireland in 1948. Earlier, in 1946, 100 Jewish children from Poland were brought to
Clonyn Castle in County Westmeath by
Solomon Schonfeld. The children were later reunited with their families or started new lives in Israel, the United Kingdom, and United States. In 2000 many of the Clonyn Castle children returned for a reunion. 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. ==21st century==