MRS Joan Finkel is a child of the 150 strong Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation, the younger and smaller relation of the city's Orthodox Jewish community. Both her father and her husband's father were involved in its stormy formation in 1946.
The idea for a liberal or progressive Jewish congregation came originally from a Corkman, Larry Elyan. Progressive Jews, unlike Orthodox Jews, do not believe the Bible is itself the Word of God, but maintain that it is open to interpretation.
In practical terms, they allow men and women to sit together at services; appoint women rabbis; extend membership to people with Jewish fathers only; and have less rigid rules on eating Kosher food and observing the Sabbath.
In 1946 the Irish Jewish community, with nearly 4,000 members, was at a historical high point. A group in Dublin, some of them well known in the life of the city, came together to form the new congregation.
Among them were the master of the Rotunda hospital, Dr Bethel Solomons, who would become the congregation's first president; Prof Mervyn Abrahamson, of the Royal College of Surgeons; A.J. (Con) Leventhal, TCD French lecturer and friend of Samuel Beckett; and Dr Ernst Schreyer, a prominent lawyer in Germany before the war, who taught German at Trinity. A slightly later arrival was Dr Hans Waldemar Rosen, conductor of the RTE Singers, who although not himself Jewish, became the congregation's organist for more than 40 years.
However, the breakaway group was not viewed kindly by the mainstream Jewish community. Mrs Finkel, then 14, was told it would not be safe for a teenager to go along to the meeting which led to the new congregation's formation because there was so much bad feeling it was feared that violence might break out.
The tension between the Orthodox community and the young Progressive congregation reached a height in the following year. Larry Elyan was forced to take a court case against the Orthodox burial society which was refusing to allow the Progressives, whom some Orthodox Jews did not recognise as proper Jews at all, to bury their dead in the Jewish cemetery.
In the event the Progressives were able to open their own cemetery in the foothills of the Dublin mountains in 1952, the same year that the foundation stone of their new synagogue in Leicester Avenue, Rathgar, was consecrated. This was a good time for Dublin's Progressive Jews, with the numbers of children in religion classes rising to 55 by 1956.
Since then, in common with their Orthodox neighbours, the story has been one of slow but steady decline, as many children of the congregation went to England, the US and Australia in pursuit of careers and Jewish spouses. The last resident rabbi left in 1972.
But the small Rathgar congregation has continued to play a role out of all proportion to its size in the life of the city. The Solomons, Abrahamson and Wein families contributed to its medical, academic, business and musical life. The TD, Mr Ben Briscoe, was briefly a member. Despite the hostility of the early years, they take their places alongside the Orthodox Jews on committees of the Jewish sports club and old people's home.
They now get between 25 and 30 people for their Friday night Sabbath services, and there are 13 children in religion class. Mrs Finkel quotes her husband: it is "depressing to be the minority of a minority on the edge of the Jewish world."
But she is more cheerful. In the summer the Rathgar synagogue gets a small but steady stream of American tourists to its services. She is clearly passionately devoted to her synagogue and its worshippers. "I've always argued with people who are downhearted about our community. We're not disappearing from Dublin, and if we are it's a very slow process. As long as there are Jews living here in Dublin, we Progressives will have a congregation.