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September 3, 2010
Partners in motion, indeed
Ireland’s Jewish community is small in numbers, but distinguished.
MASADA SIEGEL
Ireland, a mystical place, is the land of fairies, folklore, flower-filled fields, white sandy beaches and haunted castles. Influential writers and poets from W.B. Yeats to James Joyce found their inspiration from the streets of Dublin to the craggy cliffs of Slieve.
I landed in Dublin, an emerald green city bathed in summer sunlight. History touched me from the moment I arrived, as my hotel, the Merrion (merrionhotel.com), elegant in every way possible, from the rooms to the tea service, was also the place where Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, was born.
Brushing jet lag aside (OK, well, after a three-hour nap), I headed out to explore Dublin Castle. The city gets its name from the Dubh Linn, or Black Pool, which is on the site of the present castle gardens.
It was originally built as a defensive fortification for the Norman city of Dublin, and later evolved into a royal residence. In 1938, the first president of Ireland, Douglas Hyde, was inaugurated at the castle, and it continues to host to this ceremony, as well as many other governmental affairs.
Irish history is rich, complicated and dramatic. While the Jewish population is not large, never more than 6,000 people, influential figures, such Chaim Herzog, the sixth president of Israel, was born in Ireland, and have made an impact in international, as well as Irish, politics.
The earliest reference to a Jewish presence in Ireland was in the year 1079, when scholars believe merchants arrived for a short visit. However, the first Irish Jewish politician was William Annyas, elected as mayor of Youghal, County Cork, in 1555. The tradition continued, albeit a few hundred years later, when Gerald Goldberg became lord mayor of Cork in 1977.
Not to be outdone, Dublin also boasts two Jewish mayors, a father and son, Robert Briscoe, twice lord mayor of Dublin (1956-57 and 1961-62), and his son, Ben Briscoe, lord mayor of Dublin in 1988.
Dublin, the home of Joyce, is charming and a manageable city to navigate. Many locations Joyce writes about in Ulysses, where Leopold Bloom, his famous Jewish character, frequents, such as the restaurant/bar Davy Byrnes, on Grafton Street, are still open for business and marked with metal plaques.
Joyce himself frequented Bewley’s Oriental Café, a European-style coffee house where the atmosphere is easygoing, which is a great place for a meal and is filled with stories. One famous Jewish artist, Harry Kernoff – whose paintings are in the Irish National Gallery – would often eat at Bewley’s and, in exchange for his meal, would do a drawing on the bill.
Lucky for me, another famous Irish author, Oscar Wilde, was being showcased at the nearby Gaiety Theatre, with the performance of The Importance of Being Ernest, starring Stockard Channing. It’s a charming place to see a show; the performance was brilliant and the audience filled the theatre with laughter.
In Ireland, I simply felt smarter, especially as I walked down the cobble-stoned campus of Trinity College, established in 1592. The campus hosts the famous Book of Kells, which is an ornately decorated version of the Christian Gospels dating from the ninth century. The Vikings looted the book in 1007 for its jeweled cover but left the manuscript behind. The 680-page book is known for its intricate artistry. Some historians believe the book contains all of the designs found in Celtic art. Part of the exhibition includes the majestic library, aptly named the Long Room, at 213 feet long and 42 feet wide, which holds about 200,000 of the three million volumes in Trinity’s collection.
Trinity also has a Jewish connection. The Weingreen Museum, donated by Prof. Jack and Bertha Weingreen, who taught Hebrew at the university, consists mainly of pottery and other artifacts from the ancient Near East, encompassing the entire Mediterranean world from North Africa to Mesopotamia and from the ninth millennium BCE to the Crusades. It is open to the public by appointment.
Ireland boasts another Jewish museum, established in 1984. The building once housed a synagogue, but it was dedicated for its current use by former president Herzog, whose father was Yitzchak HaLevi Herzog, the first chief rabbi of Ireland. The museum is filled with photos, paintings and Judaica, and it chronicles the last 150 years of Irish Jewish communities and their contributions to present-day Ireland.
I wandered over to the Dublin Hebrew Congregation synagogue, arriving just as Saturday morning services were ending, and stopped to chat with two friendly faces. Stuart Rosenblatt is the preeminent scholar of Irish Jewish genealogy, having created an enormous database of more than 42,000 Irish Jews, their family histories and their global connections dating back to 1664. He and his friend, Anne Lapedus Brest, a photographer, were kind enough to spend some time talking to me – and they even invited me to share a meal!
While I appreciated meeting the locals, secretly I was determined to see a ghost or a fairy. After all, in a land known for its literary tales and magical happenings, anything was possible!
One of the first places where this possibility apparently exists is Newgrange, an enormous grass-covered structure that is a megalithic passage tomb, older than both Stonehenge and the pyramids of Giza, and a world heritage site. It was constructed so on every winter solstice, a beam of sunlight shines through the entrance to a passageway to illuminate the chamber inside.
My guide explained the possibilities of Newgrange: perhaps a burial chamber or a place for ritual purposes. However, she told us, no one knows what really happened in those ancient chambers.
However, with no fairies to be found, I headed towards the Castle Leslie estate (castleleslie.ie) in County Monaghan. My tour guide was the senior occupant, Sir John Leslie, fourth baronet, who is now 93. Sir John never married, never had kids, but is a man of movement, so when he is not entertaining the many guests who stay on the premises, he goes disco dancing every Saturday night at the local club.
Wandering through the castle was a treat. Room after room, twisting and turning upstairs and down ... I was sure to meet a ghost. (Many guests who stay in the castle have claimed to see a woman walking through the halls.) Adorning the walls were family portraits, photos of dignitaries and historical items, such as Winston Churchill’s christening clothes. The old-fashioned kitchen was still intact, next to a modern-day version that is used when people book parties and weddings at the castle. Perhaps the most famous wedding was Paul McCartney’s ill-fated marriage to Heather Mills, which took place at the castle. Mick Jagger, among other celebrities and members of royalty, has also spent time on the estate.
Moving forward with my adventure, one of the most magical places I experienced in Ireland was Glenveagh National Park (glenveaghnationalpark.ie), a Scottish-style castle surrounded by thousands of acres of mountains, lakes, glens and woods. The garden is divided into sections, one appropriately named the Pleasure Gardens. Glenveagh is known for its rich collection of Southern Hemisphere trees and shrubs, as well as a diverse Rhododendron collection. Luckily, the gardens are free to enter.
Enchanted with the colorful, fragrant flowers and ornate statues, it made sense that many great Irish authors found magic in their midst. The blue-tinted light and the cool air enveloped me and, off in the distance, I spotted what seemed to be a small creature flying towards me. Whether it was a ghost or a fairy, I can’t be sure. It sprinkled something in my eyes, and left me totally captivated with the exquisiteness of Ireland.
Masada Siegel can be reached at [email protected].
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