Last night I attended an event at the Irish Consulate that
filled me with lovely memories. Deputy Consul General Jacqueline O’Halloran
Bernstein was hosting an event for the Friends
of the Irish Jewish Museum. I know, you’re re-reading that title. Located
in Dublin, in the very neighborhood Leopold Bloom calls home, this museum tells
the 150 year history of Jews in Ireland. The Board has plans to increase their facilities
six-fold. The entire museum is run by very hard-working volunteers, and they have
a daunting task. Building classrooms, event space, expanded exhibition space, a
garden…sound familiar? Ireland mandated that the Irish school curriculum
include teaching children about racial, religious, and ethnic tolerance and the
museum expects to see the numbers of students increase significantly.
Ilona Moradof, MJH curator and senior project manager,
accompanied me to the event. We were welcomed most warmly by the Deputy Consul General,
and then proceeded to run into old friends. Rachel Gilkey, from the Irish Arts Center, Lorin Sklamberg
from The Klezmatics was there with the talented Susan McKeown. They performed a great
concert called Saints and Tzadiks at the
MJH in 2010.NYC Comptroller John Liu was in attendance as was Paul Schaeffer,
musician, composer, and conductor of the CBS Orchestra on Late Show with David Letterman.
The program featured a short but lively DVD of the museum
today and what its future will be. We heard from Lord Mayor of Dublin Ben
Briscoe (his dad was the first Jewish mayor of Dublin), John White, and a lovely
man named Derek Enlander. Derek was describing the time he was on
his honeymoon in Dublin and his wife Caron wanted to go to the Irish-Jewish Museum.
It has an irregular schedule. She pounded on the doors until finally someone
came to open the door. She was informed it was closed. She informed them she
was here today. They let her in.
My husband and I also stopped by the Irish-Jewish
Museum on our honeymoon. We, too, arrived on a day it was closed. I did not
think to pound on the doors until someone came. Within a few years, perhaps
they won’t have to turn a single visitor away.
Photo of the front of the museum, taken in 1995.
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1 comment:
Thank you Abby, Caron My late wife did not accept impossible as a word in her vocabulary. We spend about an hour and a half in the museum . The even pulled a history of my family dating back to 1850 when they arrived in Ireland.
The Museum is worth supporting , think of all the anecdotes that would be lost, the stories of Isaac Herzog coming to Belfast from the Sorbonne, his son Vivan (Chaim) Herzog and his next door neighbour Abba Eban, Hymie Ross the Wall Street tycoon, Lord Steinberg, and all the others.
I will help the museum in any way I can
Derek Enlander MD
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