Dr Dermot Keogh, Professor of History at University College Cork, has spent a distinguished academic career chronicling the relationship between church and state in Ireland, the church in the Third World and Irish-Vatican relations. A decade ago, he embarked on a new project. His plan was to research and describe the development of the
Irish State through the eyes of a minority religion in the Irish context. His chosen subject was the Jewish community in Ireland from the 1880s to the present day - to tell the story of that community's travails, its successes, its rise and fall.
Late next autumn, the project will come to fruition with the publication of a substantial volume on the Irish Jewish community. At a future date, he will publish a history of the Catholic Church in
Ireland as well as a biography of John Charles McQuaid.
His latest book, which will contain much new information, will raise and answer some uneasy questions. How did this State treat the
Jewish people in the 1880s and 1890s when they sought refuge here having escaped the Russian pogroms - mainly in modern day Lithuania?
The book will show that in 1946, the Jewish community numbered
4,000. Today, in Dublin, the community is less than 1,200 people.
Belfast is home to less than 400, while in Cork, Limerick and
Waterford the number of Jewish people has declined seriously. The book will show too that given its numbers, the Jewish community in
Ireland has had a disproportionate influence on this State - on its cultural life, politics, the professions and the Bar. It will discuss the resentment towards the "new Jews" who came here in the
1800s to begin a new life at the lowest rung of the economic ladder, trying to eke out a living, and how those involved in the trades, such as tailors, were not altogether welcoming. It will examine early episodes of anti-semitism in Ireland and how leaders like Michael
Davitt and John Redmond did what they could to help. The Goldberg family in Cork was a shining example of how members of the community made good and influenced their chosen city.
Of course, a book on the Jews in Ireland could not overlook the infamous anti-Jewish fervour that was whipped up in Limerick in 1904
by the Redemptorist priest, Father John Creagh, the author of inflamatory sermons against the local Jewish community. His actions led to a boycott of the 25 families, numbering some 350 people, who were trading in the town.
The economic boycott, says Dr Keogh, was an ugly and serious example of civil disruption, and when it was over, in terms of direct confrontation, ill-feeling lingered to the extent that some families felt they had to flee Limerick, and others, the State.
It was one of the most dangerous examples of inter-community conflict in the 20th century Republic, he adds.Dr Keogh has also dwelt on the role of Ireland's Chief Rabbi between 1919 and 1937 -
Isaac Herzog - a close friend of de Valera, and the father of Chaim
Herzog, who would become a future president of Israel. This was a time, he says, of great uncertainty for the Jewish people in Ireland because their relatives in Europe were suffering under resurgent anti-semitism as well as the rise of fascism. The Jews in Europe were trying to get out. How did Ireland respond to the humanitarian challenge posed at the time? The response, according to Dr Keogh, was neither generous nor liberal. We pleaded then that due to our unemployment and emigration problem, we did not have the capacity to offer shelter to refugees. And what was our refugee policy during the war years? Dr Keogh argues in his book that the Irish envoy to Berlin from 1933 to 1939 - Charles Bewley, was himself anti-semitic but that because his views were well known, he didn't influence policy.
Yet that policy, as espoused by the Department of Justice through the war years, was to make an illiberal attitude towards Jewish refugees, even less so. There were exceptions, he goes on, and the
Department of the Taoiseach as well as the Department of Foreign
Affairs showed greater sensitivity to the plight of the Jewish people.
Towards the end of the war, the then envoy to Berlin, Con Howard, made representations in a very hostile atmosphere on behalf of the
Jews. He was obeying de Valera's orders who in turn had responded to
Rabbi Herzog's pleas from Palestine where he was then Chief Rabbi. It was agreed that 100 Jewish refugees would travel to Ireland. It never happened, and the book explains why. In the post-war era, his researches have shown, there was internal debate and dissension in the Irish Civil Service regarding questions of policy on refugees.Eventually, once more at the pleading of Rabbi Herzog, 100
Jewish children found refuge in Co Meath. They remained for a year before moving on.
Dr Keogh's research and the years he has devoted to it seems likely to offer the academic world important new evidence on the question under scrutiny. But for the general reader, he has a good story to tell.