LIMERICK

LIMERICK, seaport in southwestern Ireland. Jews began to settle there after the beginning of the Russian persecutions at the close of the 19th century. The attitude of the townspeople was hostile, and attacks on the Jews occurred in 1884. Nevertheless, immigration continued and a synagogue was established in 1889. The majority of the newcomers engaged in the drapery business; others in grocery and furnishing, trading partly on the "hire-purchase" system. In 1904, owing to the preaching of Father Creagh of the Redemptorist Order, an anti-Jewish riot broke out, followed by a boycott, and many Jews left. (The most complete account of the "Limerick pogrom," as it was sometimes called, may be found in Dermot Keogh's Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland (1998), 26–53.) The community is now extinct. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: B. Shillman, Short History of the Jews in Ireland (1945), 136f.; C.H.L. Emanuel, Century and a Half of Jewish History (1910), 119, 160, 164; JC (Jan. 15, 1904). Add. Bibliography: L. Hyman, The Jews of Ireland (1972), index. (Cecil Roth)