What started out as a musical about a Jewish grandmother has morphed into the recently-launched Cork Jewish Digital Archive at Cork Public Museum. Musician, teacher and writer, Ruti Lachs, a secular Jewish Liverpudlian who lives in Cork, started researching her adopted city’s Jewish community in 2017.
While the musical has been written complete with a musical score, it was shelved once the pandemic hit. There had been a plan to produce the show, set in the local Jewish community in the early 1900s, for the Cork Midsummer Festival.
It may have been a casualty of Covid but the research hasn’t been wasted. Lachs made two short documentaries with the material she unearthed, putting them up on YouTube. There was a lot of interest in them, with Jewish people from around the world sending Lachs chapters of books and memoirs. Lachs was delighted to find a copy of the Cork Jewish Times, edited by Mr F Sless, in a London bookshop.
And now, 10 years after the closure of the city’s synagogue on South Terrace, the digital archive is live and can be seen by appointment at the Cork Public Museum. There is already a permanent exhibition of Cork’s Jewish culture at the museum. The new archive includes oral histories, poems, essays, stories and photographs from more than 50 members of the Cork Jewish diaspora and their descendants, as well as the memories of Cork locals who recall their Jewish neighbours.
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For such a small community, the city’s Jewish population left quite a mark in Cork. Estimates put Cork’s Jewish population at between 20 and 30, with a few hundred living in Munster. The synagogue building closed in 2016 and was deconsecrated because of the dwindling congregation. It is now the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Cork’s early Jewish community primarily consisted of northern Lithuanians escaping the threat of pogroms in the 1880s. They settled in the Albert Road area, near the docks. The area came to be known as “Jewtown”. The men mainly worked as vicklemen, door-to-door salespeople. Shops run by Jewish families opened around the city with, for example, Marcus Framing on Adelaide Street. This picture-framing business started out by framing “holy pictures” of the Catholic variety, supplying Roches Stores outlets.
Marcus Framing evolved into a bespoke framing service for everything from photographs to canvases and even football memorabilia. The business was put up for sale two years ago. It dates back to 1923 when Solomon Marcus opened it. None of his five children (including former Irish Press literary editor, David Marcus and award-winning film-maker, Louis Marcus) were interested in the business. It was sold to Solomon’s friend, Harry Rosehill, whose descendants kept it going until its closure.
Cork’s most famous Jewish native was Gerald Goldberg, a member of Fianna Fáil who served as lord mayor of the city from 1977-1978. He became a solicitor in 1937, reflecting the entry of some of Cork’s Jewish community into the professional classes. It was said of him that while he was a great solicitor, he could be difficult to get on with. In defending the poor, he often did pro bono work and was respected for that. His wife, Sheila, did a lot of charity work including establishing Meals on Wheels.
At its peak, in the first few decades of the 20th century, the Jewish population in Cork city numbered 450 to 500. During the second World War, Irish politicians prevented Jewish people from seeking refuge in Ireland because, they claimed, of fears it could lead to a rise in anti-Semitism.
Some memoirs indicated anti-Semitism was a reality of life for young Jewish people in Cork in the 1920s. Lachs says the people she spoke to for her research didn’t talk much about it.
Following the 1904 Limerick pogrom, several Jewish families fled to Cork which acted as a port for those planning to travel on to America.
Shalom Park, which opened in 1989, is a reminder of the city’s Jewish citizenry. In the heart of the former Jewtown, it commemorates the community’s heritage.
A Munster Jewish Congregation, primarily centred in the West Cork area, provides a gathering point for the region’s remaining Jewish residents.
The former Synagogue at number 10, South Terrace (there was a second one on South Terrace called the Remnant of Israel) was 135 years in operation. For a short time, around 1915, there was a third, dissenting one, on Union Quay.
Trinity Pedestrian Bridge, close to number 10, South Terrace, was opened by Goldberg when he was lord mayor. Locals humorously refer to it as Passover Bridge.
There is the well-known story, thought by Lachs to be untrue, that Jewish refugees ended up in Cork believing thinking they had reached America. Some of them reportedly mistook the shout of “Cork, Cork” for “New York”. It was no melting pot, but Cork’s social history has been enriched by its Jewish inhabitants.
