Community and city diminished - A synagogue closes its doors

An enriching and welcome tradition came to an end in Cork this weekend when the city’s synagogue closed ending a relationship that, in this iteration at least, stretched over 135 years.

The South Terrace synagogue has been the centre of Jewish worship in Cork since 1905. It was once supported by a community of 400 made up of 65 families.

That community was built on Russian refugees who fled persecution in Russia in the 1880s and had intended to go to America but decided to settle in Ireland. That episode ended on Saturday because emigration and financial constraints have left the congregation with “no money, no members, and no future”.

That community declined over many decades and it would be dishonest not to recognise that the appalling anti-Semetic diatribes and a shameful national refusal to offer refuge to European Jews in the Second World War played a part. The 1904 pogrom in Limerick, provoked by a hateful anti-Jewish sermon by a Redemptorist priest must have been influential too. The silence that followed it certainly was. Sadly, this is a trend across Europe, especially in France, where it is estimated 6,000 Jews leave for Israel each year. This community enriched Cork and its decline must be a matter of regret and sadness. Maybe we should mark the moment by asking, and answering honestly, why this intelligent, hard-working community found this such an alien, unsustainable place.