Each year on 16 June, the name of a fictional Irish Jew, Leopold Bloom, is invoked for the eponymous ‘Bloomsday’ and the people of Dublin celebrate the literary heritage of James Joyce’s Ulysses. But what do most of us know about non-fictional Irish Jews and their experiences? Aside from a few well-known public figures or some neighbourhood anecdotes, there is little awareness of the rich and diverse experiences of individuals and communal figures, the writers, artists, distinguished doctors, lawyers and entrepreneurs who engaged in Irish life across a wide range of cultural and social spheres. 

While remaining relatively small in number, Jews were the first significant non-Christian minority in Ireland - offered protection in the 1937 constitution. What the lives of Jews in Ireland can tell us about national identity, belonging and difference, is part of a more complex story of Ireland post-Independence.

Programme

Tuesday, 13 October, 6.15pm

Bryan Cheyette, “From the Venice Ghetto to Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ and beyond”

Tuesday 17 November, 6.15pm

Prof. Eugenio Biagini will speak about his new book, The Minority Mind: Jews and Protestants in Catholic Ireland, 1912-1968 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2026).

Tuesday, 15 December, 6.15pm

Katrina Goldstone, “’The Aliens File’:  A Story of Us and Them. Jewish migration in post-independence Ireland”

Tuesday, 26 January, 6.15pm

Documentary Screening and panel discussion: Der Veg Abhaile (2024). A documentary film exploring Irish Jewish identity from the perspectives of culture and migration.

Directed by Hannah Bloom and produced by Saul Woolfson.

Tuesday 13 February, 6.15pm

Natalie Wynn, “Isaac Herzog and the Irish Chief Rabbinate”

Tuesday, 9 March, 6.15pm

Seán Gannon, “Christian Mission and Irish Jews”

Tuesday 16 April, 6.15pm

Trisha Oakley Kessler, “Nationalism and the economy: Jews, Identity and Belonging in Twentieth-Century Ireland”

Tuesday 18 May, 6.15pm

Zuleika Rodgers, “Jacob Weingreen: A Jewish Journey and a Trinity Story”