That has not been the Jewish experience in Ireland at all. There was childhood name-calling and such, maybe, but that was about it, Gerald Goldberg says, and the literary editor David Marcus and the artist Gerald Davis agree.
Davis has always felt himself to be "one of a cherished minority" in Ireland, in fact. He quotes the (Jewish) playwright and author Wolf Mankowitz, who felt the Irish were particularly warm towards the Jews. David Marcus feels that "by and large the Jewish experience in Ireland has been an extremely happy one". But there have been `episodes'.
"What ish my country?" asks the only character identified as Irish in the entire canon of William Shakespeare. A similar question has been put to Jews everywhere down the ages. What is your country? At its root was an implicit answer, and prejudice, that Jews had no country and no loyalty to anyone or anything other than themselves. That they were loyal only to their own wandering tribe.
"What is your nation if I may ask," queries the Citizen in James Joyce's Ulysses, that great novel at whose centre is the most celebrated Irishman in fiction, the Jew, Leopold Bloom. "Ireland, says Bloom, I was born here. Ireland."
But it does not save him. Eventually the Citizen threatens to "brain that bloody jewman for using the holy name. By Jesus, I'll crucify him so I will". The "jewman" had not used the holy name at all. Joyce's Citizen reflects the anti-Semitic sentiments entertained freely then by nationalists such as Arthur Griffith in his articles and newspapers.
"Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? And do you know why?. . . Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemly. . ." (from Ulysses). There would appear to be more than a grain of truth in Mr Deasy's observation.
Certainly, in the early decades of this century, some of the more traditional Catholic clergy made no secret of their negative attitude to Jews. Prominent among these were Father Denis Fahey, professor of theology at the Holy Ghost seminary in Kimmage, the Jesuit Father Edward Cahill, and Father Edmund Burke of the Cross magazine.
Most frequently remembered however is the Redemptorist Father John Creagh, director of the arch-confraternity in Limerick. In 1904, that same year in which Ulysses is set, Father Creagh took action. He had been approached by shopkeepers in Limerick who wanted rid of competition from the city's Jewish pedlars. There were then about 170 Jews in the city.
Father Creagh took to his task with a relish, raising every Jewish stereotype his imagination could construe before the good Catholics of Limerick. A sermon he delivered on January 11th, 1904 included such sentiments as: "Twenty years ago and less Jews were known only by name and evil repute in Limerick. They were sucking the blood of other nations, but those nations rose up and turned them out and they came to our land to fasten themselves on us like leeches, and to draw our blood when they had been forced away from other countries. . . they prefer to get their goods from other Jews across the Channel and week by week tons of goods of every description are landed in Limerick from Jews outside the country, the cripple local trade and industry . . .
"I do not hesitate to say that there are no greater enemies of the Catholic Church than the Jews. If you want an example look to France. . . The little children are being deprived of their education. No nun, monk or priest can teach in a school. . . The Jews are in league with the Freemasons in France, and they succeeded in turning out of their country all the nuns and religious orders. Redemptorist to the number of 200 had been turned out of France, and that is what the Jews would do in our country if they were allowed into power." A helluva "hellfire"-style sermon.
So began a boycott of the Jews in Limerick and a surge of violence against them. Within a year most Jews had left the city. Among them was Gerald Goldberg's father, Louis. He was beaten by "a big burly man with a black shillelagh" and needed stitches in his head.
Louis was 12 when he escaped from Lithuania. He had never heard of Ireland and was heading for the US when they dropped him off ship in Cork. He walked from there to Limerick, where there were other Jews from his village. Like so many of the Jews who came to Ireland in the 1880s and 1890s they were escaping pogroms.
Gerald has consigned the Limerick episode to the past. He has been to tea with the Redemptorists there and they made a full apology. "I don't want to bring it up any more," he says. In general, Gerald says, he has been treated "very decently" here.
He was educated by the Presentation Brothers in Cork, who were "most kind to Jewish students." The principal, Brother Edward Connolly, got him into law. One day he asked Gerald what he would like to do when he grew up and, when he said "the Bar", advised him it would be impossible.
He said he might be able to get him into a good solicitor's office though. That was how he started with the Barry Galvin firm. Galvin had told Brother Connolly that "if you had not come to me I would have found it difficult to accept this boy" (because he was Jewish).
During the war, Brother Connolly became afraid of what might happen the school if there was a German invasion and they discovered Jewish children there. So he stopped them attending. Then Brother Nolan of the Christian Brothers said to the community "Bring me your children". In Cork then too, as in Dublin, Jews were not allowed join golf clubs or any such sporting and social clubs. They set up their own. But they are disappearing now too.
In Dublin the community has ambitious plans to rebuild the synagogue at Terenure, along with a community centre, to serve its remaining 1,000/1,200 population. The synagogue on Adelaide Road is closed now. It has been sold to a Galway builder who plans to turn it into luxury apartments.
However, there will be one last ceremony in the Adelaide Road synagogue. A young Irish Jewish couple are coming home to be married there in May. Then it will close forever. Such welcome and unwelcome news. Only in real life could a tragedy be marked with a wedding.
About 150 members of the separate Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation, a more liberal Jewish group, has a synagogue at Rathgar. In Belfast, about 200 Jews, of a similar, elderly age profile to the one in Dublin, attend the Somerton Road synagogue there. In total, the island's Jewish population is said to be about 1,500. At its post-war peak it would have been more than 5,000. Those were the days.
But for now "there is great novelty in being an Irish Jew," says Gerald Davis cheerfully. The novelty will not be taken from him. It will remain, as his people continue to slip quietly out of our history.