DUBLIN

DUBLIN, capital of the Republic of Ireland. A small Jewish group apparently lived there in the Middle Ages since the Exchequer   of the Jews at Westminster had an Irish branch. In the middle of the 17th century, some Spanish and Portuguese Marranos settled in the city, including Francisco and Manuel Lopes Pereira and Jacome Faro. According to tradition, a synagogue was founded in Crane Lane around 1660. Military operations in Ireland after the revolution of 1689 attracted a few more Sephardi Jews, and the community knew a short period of relative prosperity. In 1718 a cemetery was purchased with the assistance of the London Sephardi community, which advanced the Dublin congregation money to meet its debts and lent it some scrolls of the Law. During the 18th century, the original Sephardi element died out, and was replaced by Ashkenazi immigrants. By 1791 the congregation had fallen into complete decay and the borrowed scrolls were returned. The community was revived in 1882 by East European immigrants. It increased considerably with the Russo-Jewish immigration at the close of the century. Many of the Jews of that time engaged in peddling, small business, and small financial transactions (moneylending and pawnbroking). In the course of time the Jews moved into shopkeeping, manufacturing, and the professions. There has been considerable emigration over the years, especially among the younger generation. In 1968 the Jewish population numbered approximately 3,600 and maintained seven synagogues (including one Progressive) with the usual congregational institutions. James Joyce's Ulysses depicts certain elements of Jewish life in Dublin at the beginning of the century. Paradoxically, many literary visitors to today's Dublin come to see the route taken on "Bloomsday" by James Joyce's Leopold Bloom. isaac herzog , later chief rabbi of Israel, was chief rabbi of Dublin 1919–36. immanuel jakobovits was chief rabbi from 1949 and Isaac Cohen from 1959. robert briscoe was lord mayor from 1956–57 and from 1961–62, and his son in the 1980s. In the mid-1990s the Jewish population numbered approximately 1,300. In 2004, after some renewed growth, it was estimated at about 1,500. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: B. Shillman, Short History of the Jews in Ireland (1945), passim; Shillman and Wolf, in: JHSET, 11 (1924–27), 143–67; Huehner, ibid., 5 (1902–05), 224–42; C. Roth, Rise of Provincial Jewry (1950), 56f; L. Hyman, Jews of Ireland (1972). ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: D. Keogh, Jews in Twentieth Century Ireland (1998); R. Rivlin, Shalom Ireland: A Social History of the Jews in Modern Ireland (2003). (Cecil Roth)