In James Joyce’s Ulysses, there’s a mordant joke that unveils a sombre facet of Ireland’s past: Ireland, it’s asserted, prides itself on not persecuting Jews because it never allowed them entry in the first place.
Regrettably, in truth, very few Jews reside in Ireland. My observations recently have uncovered two disturbing realities. The first pertains to how effortlessly groups of people can be depersonalised when they’re treated as distant concepts. The second unveils the human potential for extreme brutality when one operates under the assumption of impunity.
My Jewish forebears, who were ethnically expunged from Lithuania, were one of the few that were actually admitted into this country. My knowledge about their experience of ethnic expulsion is scant. They lived there, and then they were forced out. Such narratives of displacement spanning continents and generations are so commonplace in the Jewish saga that they don’t necessitate a specific name. I’m unsure about the exact location of my forebears’ shtetl, where they existed at the whim of people who refused to recognise them as fellow Europeans. This recognition surfaced only when it served to reject Jewish sovereignty.
Our family saga, the Moiselles of Ireland, is a tale I am well acquainted with and am proud of. Our family’s contributions to the Irish society are part and parcel of our cultural heritage: especially highlighted in the famed Irish masterwork cited above. Joyce weaved the names of actual members of the Irish Jewish community, including my ancestors, into Ulysses.
Ulysses resonates with me beyond this familial link. Leopold Bloom, its protagonist, was born to a Catholic mother and baptised right after birth, hence not conventionally Jewish. Regardless, Bloom is recognised as a Jew in Dublin and treated accordingly. Similarly, I was raised Catholic, but my paternal lineage is Jewish.
From October 7th onwards, this Jewish identity-earlier a subsidiary facet of my existence-has been pushed into prominence while I increasingly confront (and voice my opposition to) the rising tide of anti-Semitism in this country, a venom seeping into our society from the upper echelons.
It’s impossible to ignore the chilling reminders of my forefathers’ encounters with anti-Jewish prejudice, which persist in Irish society today. My grandfather’s kin operated a business named The Gramophone Stores in Johnson’s Court, Dublin. This establishment became a target for anti-Semitic provocations, featuring abusive graffiti. A photograph, thought to be taken around 1940, reveals anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish slogans along with swastikas, vandalised outside our store.
Fast forward to 2023, when I captured an image of a vandalised window on Grafton Street, representing a continuation of the very same prejudice. A placard proclaimed “there is blood on your hands”, the “a” in hands was replaced by the Star of David.
Anti-Semitism can adapt and change according to its environment, but its eventual manifestation remains disturbingly similar. Currently, as a doctoral student at Trinity College Dublin, I have seen first-hand the emergence of hostility towards Jews. A recent four-day student protest prominently featured undeniably anti-Semitic and pro-terrorist banners. The college was a backdrop for a flag endorsing the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group banned by the EU as a terrorist organisation, and various banners within the college grounds. This is a cause for deep concern.
The sight of banners espousing anti-Semitic sentiments, such as “Break the Chains of Zionism” and “Mothers Against Zionism”, bearing an image of PFLP former militant Leila Khaled, particularly unsettled me. The very same words smeared across my grandfather’s store before the birth of modern Israel still echo strongly: angled as “anti-Zionism”, a reinvented form of anti-Semitic animosity, Zionism being the belief in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish homeland. History repeats itself, and my family has seen this loop before.
Agne Kniuraite, a fellow student at Trinity and head of the Trinity Jewish Society, shares her personal experiences. The unparalleled isolation is substantially felt when schoolmates, friends and colleagues unexpectedly show antagonistic behaviour. The resultant self-questioning – ‘how could people who know me act this way?’ – is often fraught with disbelief. As a Jewish student, she feels alienated, her calls for understanding of her human state met with obtuse responses. She struggles to find the exact words to encapsulate how being on the dismissed side of this schism impacts her.
This partition has its roots in a long-standing conflict, a conflict that is alien to most students who engage in it casually. The latter group see it as an inconsequential pursuit, failing to grasp that it’s a profound issue for some of their cohorts. It’s not just a social cause; it’s a distortion and discussion of their very existence. Unbeknownst to many, a large proportion of Jews align themselves with Zionism. To a significant number of Jews, Zionism equates to survival and personal autonomy. Misinterpreting such a sentiment, either due to naivety or ill-will, outcasts those for whom rejecting this self-aspect isn’t an option. The line between the contrived ‘anti-Zionist’ persona and the actual, unchanging Zionist Jew identity is clearly drawn: one springs from a long history of anti-Semitism, while the other from an unending history of intense persecution. The marginalisation and stigmatisation of Jewish students due to their differing reality from the ‘fashionable’ mainstream school of thought only amplifies the isolation Jews experience on campus.
On a final note, many young Jews do not perceive a sense of welcome, be it at TCD, UCD, or eventually, throughout Ireland.
Indeed, a prominent disparity exists between the anti-Semitism at U.S. campuses and Ireland’s campuses. While the former does not echo the sentiments of the wider society, what’s seen in TCD and UCD tragically reflects the views of a sizeable segment of Irish society. This includes politicians and a section of the media that indulges in biased reporting at its mildest, anti-Semitism at its worst.
In the 1940s, the Jewish community in Ireland numbered approximately 5,500 individuals. By 2016, census data showed that the figure had shrunk to roughly 2,500 and even further to 2,193 in 2022. The synagogue in Cork, which had been standing for 89 years, was shut down in 2016. Given this drastic reduction in Jewish populace in Ireland, the dread is that it will completely vanish in no more than two decades. This loss is due largely to the absence of a welcoming atmosphere in a land renowned for its hospitality. It is feared that the people of Ireland might tread upon the same path as their counterparts in numerous other nations. A route wherein places infused with the echoes of Jewish history, over time, might become bereft of such memories.
Rachel Moiselle, currently pursuing her doctorate at Trinity College in Dublin, and Agne Kniuraite, a postgraduate student at the same institute, were contributors to this research.