Introduction
This paper aims to
focus on Diaspora Jews in
James Joyce's Ulysses. The
Diaspora group embodied a powerful
economic principle and became a great threat to the local Irish people,
that
caused anti-Semitic movements. Joyce
precisely reflected on this mood, but sometimes tactically manipulated
it in
his fictional world.
Leopold
Bloom is known among his acquaintances to have a Hungarian Jewish
background
and have inherited a financial competence from his suicidal father.
However, he and his wife Molly, who has a
suspicious Jewish mother, are not orthodox Jews, so they are isolated
from
other members of the Jewish community.
In the novel, other Jewish people and anti-Semites are often
observed. How did Irish Jewish people
live in Dublin? How does Ulysses reflect the
truth? Using some historical and socioeconomic data,
Irish Jewish lives in the Jewish quarter called "Little Jerusalem," and
other parts of Joycean Dublin will be examined.
I. The Jewish "Invasion" of Ireland
In 1866, the year of Bloom’s
birth, the Jewish population
of Dublin numbered about two hundred and that of Belfast at most a few
dozen,
before the Litvak “invasion” beginning in the late 1870s.
Dublin’s Jewish quarter near Bloom’s
fictional birthplace at 52, Clanbrassil Street Upper was called “Little
Jerusalem.” By 1904, the estimate
was 3,371, most of them (2,200) residing in Dublin, according to Leon
Hühner’s “Jews
of Ireland.” The transition in numbers of
the Jewish population was more remarkable than that of London,
Manchester and
Liverpool before the foundation of Israel in 1948.
As Cormac Ó
Gráda argues in Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce, in
economic terms, Ireland’s Jewish community made considerable
progress between the 1870s and the 1940s, because in Ireland,
discrimination
did not force the immigrants into typical Jewish jobs, like peddling,
money-lending and dealing in scrap and rags and in secondhand furniture
(Ó
Gráda 210).
Jewish people had already acquired trading skills.
In addition, the immigrants saved and
invested in property, education, and business (Ó Gráda 210-11). Ireland’s
relative economic backwardness shaped both the number and the choice of
occupations of the Jewish immigrants at that time.
No one could have imagined the future “Celtic
Tiger” then.
As some examples of the
negative reactions against the Jewish “invasion,” many anti-Semitics
are
described in Ulysses. The fictional Garret
Deasy tells Stephen that “Ireland,
they say, has the honour of being the only country
which never persecuted the jews,” “Because she never let them in” (U 2.437-47). In
“Lestrygonians,” Bloom watches the notoriously
anti-Semitic judge Sir Frederick Falkiner
(1831-1908), going into the Freemason Hall (headquarters) in 17-18,
Molesworth
Street (U 8.1151). In the mood of
anti-Semitism of Barney Kiernan’s pub in “Cyclops,” Bloom faces the
anti-Semitic “citizen” who is modeled after Michael Cusack (1847-1907), a Gaelic
athletic enthusiast who
founded the Gaelic Athletic Association in 1884. In
the pub, Bloom is also rumored to give the
ideas for Sinn Fein to Arthur Griffith (1872-1922) who became the first
president of the newly formed Irish Free State in 1922 (U
12.1573-77) and was also known as a notorious anti-Semite.
II. Dublin's "Little Jerusalem"
The first
known record of Jews living in Dublin dates to the late seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries, probably Jews displaced following the
expulsions from the Iberian Peninsula according to Educational
Jewish Aspects of James Joyce's "Ulysses" (or
EJAJJU
4).
The earliest known synagogue dates back to
1660 and was situated in Crane Lane.1 The
Napoleonic Wars brought a further influx
of Jews to Dublin, records of the births and deaths were kept by a Rev.
J.
Sandheim, minister of Stafford Street and Mary’s Abbey synagogues
(1820-1879) (EJAJJU 4).
It
was in the late nineteenth century that a new wave of immigrants
reached
Ireland, many of whom were fleeing Anti-Semitism which was encapsulated
by the
May Laws in the Pale of Settlement, Russia from 1881. These
people came from Lithuania, Latvia,
Russia, Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe. They settled
all over Ireland, but the largest
community settled in the South Circular Road area of Dublin. This
area, where the synagogues and Jewish
business came into being, was gradually known to non-Jews as “Little
Jerusalem”
(EJAJJU 4).
As
Ó Gráda notes, virtually all of Ireland’s
Jewish immigrants settled in urban areas as other Jewish immigrants did
in
other European countries in the late nineteenth century.
On the eve of World War I nearly nine in ten
lived in one of the three major cities: Dublin, Belfast, or Cork. There were also small settlements in Limerick
(119), Waterford (62), Derry (38), and most surprisingly in the Armagh
linen
town of Lurgan (about 75) (Ó Gráda 94).
Naturally, they became
traders and skilled
artisans who apparently have earned much more money than average Irish
workers. In Dublin, the newcomers tended
to live in
the tenements in central Dublin, near Dublin Castle, or Mary’s Abbey
where the
city’s only synagogue functioned until 1892.
Ó Gráda
estimates that the Lithuanian
Jewish population numbered about twenty-five in the late 1870s (Ó Gráda
97). They did not remain in the tenements
so long,
but they moved to the complex of small streets off Clanbrassil Street
Lower in
the early 1880s. As Nick
Harris remembers in
Dublin’s Little Jerusalem, Clanbrassil
Street was the heart of the Jewish community (Harris 30).
It catered to all the Jewish people in
Dublin, and, in the early twentieth century, for at least 95 percent of
them it
was within walking distance (Harris 30).
Clanbrassil Street is located south of St. Patrick Cathedral in
the
Southside of Dublin. As often discussed,
Bloom lives at a tenement of No. 7 Eccles Street in the Northside of
Dublin
across the River Liffey. The area was
traditionally considered as being more working-class, although
Clanbrassil
Street area then, and also today, is not for the rich.
However, the average valuation of the
tenements of the eighty houses of Eccles Street rated
for each municipal tax per annum was about ￡31.33 while that of the seventy-eight houses
of Lombard Street West was ￡15.21 and
the twenty-five houses of St. Kevin’s Parade ￡14.52 as calculated the assessed values
listed in Thom’s Official Directory 1904.2 From the assessed values of the houses,
“Little
Jerusalem” was much more working-class than Eccles Street.
According
to research by Ó Gráda, the housing stock, mainly roadside one-story
terraced
units, was new or almost new. Most units
contained outside flush toilets and running water: dwellings
incorporating
three or four small rooms were typical.
The area that would soon come to be known as “Little Jerusalem”
included
most of the streets between Saint Kevin’s Parade and the Grand Canal.
At the turn of the century, there were two
small clusters with very heavy concentrations of Jews: one around Saint
Kevin’s
Parade/Oakfield Place/Lombard Street West, and the other across the
South
Circular Road, around Kingsland Parade/Walworth Road/ Martin Street by
the
Grand Canal (Ó Gráda 99). There was a
hierarchy of streets within the ghetto and the Jews sharply sensed
class
distinctions. Although the majority of Jews
lived in “Little Jerusalem,” the area was not exclusively Jewish, with
a number
of Gentile neighbors.
Joyce very
cautiously selected Bloom’s
fictional birthplace at 52,
Clanbrassil
Street Upper and his old address in Lombard Street West in “Little
Jerusalem.” The Blooms lived in the Jewish quarter until
they left presumably in mid-1894, when Bloom was twenty eight and Molly
was
twenty three after they lost their only son Rudy (U 8.608-10).
15.3220. earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the
15.3221. circumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall, M.
15.3222. Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris
15.3223. Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky,
15.3224. the reverend Leopold Abramovitz, chazen. With swaying arms they
15.3225. wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.) (Underlining mine.)
It
is to be noted that the above people were real Jewish people.
According to Educational
Jewish Aspects of James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” most “real”
Jewish figures described in the novel lived in “Little Jerusalem”:
The
list of the Jews of “Little Jerusalem” described in Ulysses3:
Leopold Abramovits, Chazen (reader), according to Hyman is the same person as
Abraham Lipman Abramovits, Reader of the Lennox Street Synagogue. He came
to Dublin in 1887 and served the community as a ritual slaughterer, Mohel
(circumciser) and Hebrew teacher (EJAJJU 9).
2. Bloom, Joseph: 3, Blackpitts.5
3. Bloom, Leopold: 52, Clanbrassil Street Upper (￡15).6 A plaque in front reads;
“Here, in Joyce’s imagination, was born Leopold Bloom, citizen, husband, father,
worker, the reincarnation of Ulysses.” An elderly dapper Bennie Bloom
(1881-1966) is sometimes mentioned as a model for his Joycean namesake (Ó Gráda
60). On 16 June 1904 he and his wife Molly lives in a tenement at 7, Eccles Street.
According to Thom’s 1904, the house is “Vacant, [valuation of the tenement rated
for its municipal tax per annum:] ￡28.”
4. Blum, Isaac: 3, Desmond Street (￡17).7 (?U 15.721-22 [von Blum Pasha],
?U 17.1748 [Blum Pasha])
5. Citron, Israel: 28, St. Kevin’s Parade.8 (U 4.204-06, 7.219-20, 8.178,
15.1904-7; with Mastiansky, ?U 15.3223 [J.Citron], 15.4357, 18.573). J. Citron
(a misprint for I. Citron) has been identified by Hyman as Israel Citron (1876-1951),
a peddler who lived at 17, Kevin’s Parade between 1904 and 1908 (Ó Gráda 106).
It is also significant that his name was chosen by Joyce because the citron fruit,
used in the feast of Tabernacles, is symbolic of all the wandering tribes of Israel
and of the coming redemption that will reunite all the tribes (EJAJJU 8; Cf. Hyman
168).
6. Goldwater, Joseph: 77, Lombard Street W. (￡16). (U 15.3222). “Here the Dublin
Hebrew Young Men’s Association met. Their officials in 1899 were I.M. Shmulowitz,
Isaac Shein, M. Citron, H. Greentuch & Solomon Bloom. Joseph Goldwater lived at
77, Lombard Street West. It was at this address that the Dublin Hebrew Young
Men’s Association met at the end of the nineteenth century” (EJAJJU 8-9).
7. Herzog, Moses: 13, St. Kevin’s Parade (￡13).9 (U 12.17 & 33; U 15.3222 &
4357-58). Moses Herzog, according to Hyman, was a one-eyed bachelor and
bibulous peddler who emigrated to South Africa in 1908 (Hyman 329). He lived at
13, St. Kevin’s Parade between 1894 and 1906, near to Citron and Mastiansky, and
traded as an itinerant grocer (EJAJJU 9; Cf. Hyman 168; Ó Gráda 106). Herzog
was also an unlicensed moneylender (Ó Gráda 64) who is described so in the beginning
of “Cyclops.”
8. Masliansky [Mastiansky, Philip or Julius]: 16, St. Kevin’s Parade (￡16).10 (U 4.205,
6.770, 15.1904-7; with Citron, U 15.3223, 4357, 17.58 [Julius (Juda) Mastiansky],
U 17.2134 [Julius Mastiansky], U 18.417 [Mrs.Mastiansky]). O. Mastiansky may be
a misprint for P. Mastiansky (U 15.3223), the same person as Julius Mastiansky, who
figures in Ulysses as one of Molly Bloom’s lovers (U 17.55-59). The name Masliansky
appears in the Midwife’s register which was the account book of Nurse Shillman who
was working in Dublin at the turn of the century (EJAJJU 8). According to the
entries of Masliansky, two children were born to Philip Masliansky and Florrie Leause
in 1899 & 1901 (EJAJJU 8).
9. Moisel, Wolf: 24, St. Kevin’s Road (￡14).11 (U 4.209, ?8.391-92 [Mrs.
Moisel], ?U 15.3223 [M.Moisel]. U 17.1254 [Philip Moisel (pyemia, Heytesbury
Street)]). M. Moisel is probably one and the same as Nisan Mosel, ritual
slaughterer and Mohel to the Jewish Community in Dublin. Nisan Moisel was the
father of Elyah Wolf Moisel (1856-1904), whose wife Basseh gave birth to a
Daughter Rebecca in June 1889, thirteen days after Molly Bloom’s daughter Milly
was born (U 8.391-92).12 The name Moisel was originally spelt Moiselle (EJAJJU
9). Bloom’s father Rudolf Virag changed his Hungarian family name to its
anglicized form, Bloom. Name-changing was very common among the members of
the Jewish community, usually for ease of spelling or pronunciation.13
10. Rosenberg, H. [Harris]: 63, Lombard Street W. (￡16).14 (U 15.3222-23). Little
is known of Harris Rosenberg other than he lived at 63, Lombard Street West.
However, among the entries of nurse Shillman’s register is an entry for the birth
of a daughter to a Mrs. H. Rosenberg in 1907 (EJAJJU 9).
11. Shulomowitz (Shmulovich), M.: 57, Lombard Street W. (U 15.3221-22). M.
Shulomowitz is probably M. Shmulovitch (d. 1940) who was the secretary of the
Jewish Library, 57, Lombard Street West (￡23).15 He was the Dublin correspondent
of the London Hebrew Weekly, Hayehudi, who emigrated to South Africa in 1904,
returning some years later and settling in Cork, where he married the daughter of Rev.
Elyan, Minister of the Cork Hebrew Congregation (Hyman 328).
12. Watchman, Minnie: 20, St. Kevin’s Parade (￡15). (U 15.3223). Minnie Watchman
was the great-aunt of the author Louis Hyman who lived at 20, St. Kevin’s Parade.
The inclusion of her name in the list of the circumcised may be a private joke on
the part of Joyce due to her appearance in Thom’s 1905 [also in Thom’s 1904] with
the prefix Mr. before her name (EJAJJU 9).
The above
people all lived
in “Little Jerusalem” around 1904. The
majority of them still lived in tenements:
Map
of Dublin’s “Little
Jerusalem” (Adapted from Educational
Jewish Aspects of James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” 5)
It
is ironic that Leopold Bloom is the only
fictional Jewish character in the above list of the residents of
“Little
Jerusalem.” In fact, there was a Mollie
Bloom, who married a Human Wachman, living at 28, Hammond Street,
Blackpitts (EJAJJU 8).16 However, his family name “Bloom”
(or Blum) itself was a common Jewish name, not only in Dublin but also
in other
European cities.
Bloom often remembers his childhood friends Citron and Mastiansky,
which
makes him seen like a real Jew living in “Little Jerusalem.”
[Israel] “poor
Citron” & Mastiansky:
4.202. olivetrees. Quiet long days: pruning, ripening. Olives are packed in jars,
4.203. eh? I have a few left from Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows the
4.204. taste of them now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates. Citrons too.
4.205. Wonder is poor Citron still in Saint Kevin's parade. And Mastiansky with
4.206. the old cither. Pleasant evenings we had then. Molly in Citron's
4.207. basketchair. Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the
4.208. nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet, wild perfume.
4.209. Always the same, year after year. They fetched high prices too, Moisel told
4.210. me. Arbutus place: Pleasants street: pleasant old times. Must be without a
4.211. flaw, he said. Coming all that way: Spain, Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the
4.212. Levant. Crates lined up on the quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a
4.213. book, navvies handling them barefoot in soiled dungarees. (Underlining mine.)
"Poor"
In another
description in the hallucination of “Circe,” both Mastiansky
and Citron are described with stereotyped Jewish features. They wear gabardines
and long earlocks like Jewish people in the Middle Ages.
They approach their friend Bloom wagging
their beards.
Mastiansky,
Citron and Reuben J. Dodd (English moneylender described as a Jew):
15.1897. HORNBLOWER
15.1898. (in ephod and huntingcap, announces) And he shall carry the sins of the
15.1899. people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness, and to Lilith, the
15.1900. nighthag. And they shall stone him and defile him, yea, all from Agendath
15.1901. Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of Ham.
15.1902. (All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide
15.1903. travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him.
15.1904. Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long
15.1905. earlocks. They wag their beards at Bloom.)
15.1906. MASTIANSKY AND CITRON
15.1907. Belial! Laemlein of Istria, the false Messiah! Abulafia! Recant!
15.1908. (George R Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears, a tailor's goose under
15.1909. his arm, presenting a bill)
15.1910. MESIAS
15.1911. To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.
15.1912. BLOOM
15.1913. (rubs his hands cheerfully) Just like old times. Poor Bloom!
15.1918. (Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded Iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on
15.1919. his shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the
15.1920. pillory.)
15.1921. REUBEN J
15.1922. (whispers hoarsely) The squeak is out. A split is gone for the flatties. Nip
15.1923. the first rattler. (Underlining mine.)
George Robert Mesias was also a real Jew in Dublin.
Mesias, Bloom’s tailor (see U 6.831, 11.881,
15.1302, 15.1908-11,
17.2171) of 5 Eden Quay, was a native of Russia and appears in a parade
of
false messiahs in “Circe.” In the Census
of Ireland, 1901, he is listed as a widower of the Jewish persuasion,
aged 36,
lodging at the home of Hoseas Weiner in Clontarf West.
A tall and handsome man, he married Elsie
Watson as his second wife, on 5 November 1901 at Clontarf Presbyterian
Church
(Hyman 168).
Reuben J. Dodd is a moneylender, and the passengers all curse
him when
the funeral carriage passes him by in “Hades” because they all except
Bloom have
owed money to Dodd (U 6.251). The real Reuben J. Dodd mercilessly collected money from
Joyce’s
father John Stanislaus Joyce when he almost became bankrupt (Davison
58-59). The reader may
believe Bloom's thought that
Reuben J. Dodd was "really what they call a dirty jew" (U
8.1159), but the real Dodds were not
Jewish but English in origin. However,
in the biography of Joyce's father, John
Stanislaus Joyce, by John Wyse Jackson and Peter Costello the view
is that
Joyce's father, John Stanislaus, fabricated Dodd's Jewishness, blaming
him in
revenge for his financial disasters (Jackson & Costello 179).
There are many Jewish figures living in other places in Dublin,
such as Dr
Hy Franks, an English Jew appearing in Ulysses
(U 15.2633), a "quack" [fraudulent]
doctor who had posters stuck up in greenhouses and urinals offering
treatment
for venereal diseases. “All kinds of
places are good for ads” (U 8.95-96)
is Bloom’s observation on Franks’ promotional activities.
In “Circe,” Lipoti Virag, Bloom’s
grandfather, transforms into a bird butting with its head the fly bill
for
advertising the pox doctor, and cries, ‘Quack’
(U 15.2627-38). Henry
Jacob Franks, born in Manchester in
1852, arrived in Dublin in 1903 after deserting his Turkish-born wife
Miriam (U 8.350 [Miriam Dandrade], 9.449, 15.2994-3000, 15.4360-61 [Mrs
Miriam Dandrade] ;née Mandil) and their
four children (Hyman 168).
Maurice E. Solomons (U
10.1262), an optician, was a prominent member of Dublin’s Jewish
community. His business is listed as being
at 19, Nassau
Street, Dublin as “optician, manufacturer of spectacles, mathematical
&
hearing instruments, ￡56” and also
as “The Austro-Hungarian Vice-Consulate―Imperial and Royal
Vice-Consul, Maurice E. Solomons, J.P.” (Thom’s
1904).
He was appointed to the job by
Archduke Ferdinand.17
The
derogative name for Jews “Ikey Moses” (U
9.607, etc), the fictional butcher Moses Dlugacz (U 4, U 11 & U 15) and the fictional Bloom
the
dentist (U 12.1638) are also
described in the novel, while Bella Cohen, who appears as the madam of
the
brothel in “Circe,” was probably modeled on "Mrs. Cohen" at 82,
Mecklenburg Street in the heart of Dublin's then 'red light' district
(Hyman
168).18
III. Jewish Economic "Threats"
and Limerick "Pogrom"
Throughout the eighteenth century, Sephardi bankers were
prominent in
England and remained so even when, in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries,
the Frankfurt-based Rothchilds provided loans to the British government
for the Crimean and Boer Wars and
the building of the Suez Canal (Feinstein 42). As often mentioned in many occasions,
moneylending is the most stereotyped Jewish job.
In
the previous chapter, Reuben J. Dodd, actually an English moneylender,
is
described as a Jew by Bloom: "Now he’s really what they call a dirty
jew" (U 8.1159). This
anecdote also indicates the common sense
among the Irish that moneylenders and usurers are typical Jewish jobs
which
were despised by Gentiles. In “Scylla
& Charybdis,” Stephen Dedalus presents his theory on Shakespeare
saying, “He
drew Shylock out of his own long pocket” (U
9.741-42). John Eglinton urges Stephen
to prove that Shakespeare is a Jew (U
7.763). Everyone enjoys Stephen’s
unconvincing
argument in the National Library.
The higher economic status of moneylenders is apparent from a
list of
Jewish moneylenders prepared by the Dublin police in 1905 (Ó
Gráda 61). Some moneylenders doubled as merchants.
No Jewish moneylenders’ ledgers have been unearthed, and it
seems
unlikely that any will be uncovered (Ó Gráda 63). Many loans were transacted
without any formal
paperwork (Ó Gráda 64).
The
poor who needed to replenish stock relied on moneylenders who knew them
to help
them. Unlicensed moneylenders like
Joyce’s Moses Herzog could not pursue defaulters through the courts
(cf. U 12.13-51).19
Moses Herzog is
mentioned as an unlicensed moneylender:
12.13. --Devil a much, says I. There's a bloody big foxy thief beyond by the
12.14. garrison church at the corner of Chicken lane - old Troy was just giving
12.15. me a wrinkle about him - lifted any God's quantity of tea and sugar to pay
12.16. three bob a week said he had a farm in the county Down off a
12.17. hop-of-my-thumb by the name of Moses Herzog over there near
12.18. Heytesbury street.
12.19. --Circumcised? says Joe.
12.20. --Ay, says I. A bit off the top. An old plumber named Geraghty. I'm
12.21. hanging on to his taw now for the past fortnight and I can't get a penny out
12.22. of him.
12.23. --That the lay you're on now? says Joe.
12.24. --Ay, says I. How are the mighty fallen! Collector of bad and doubtful
12.25. debts. But that's the most notorious bloody robber you'd meet in a day's
12.26. walk and the face on him all pockmarks would hold a shower of rain. Tell
12.27. him, says he, I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him to send you round
12.28. here again or if he does, says he, I'll have him summonsed up before the
12.29. court, so I will, for trading without a licence. And he after stuffing himself
12.30. till he's fit to burst. Jesus, I had to laugh at the little jewy getting his shirt
12.31. out. He drink me my teas. He eat me my sugars. Because he no pay me my
12.32. moneys?
12.33. For nonperishable goods bought of Moses Herzog, of 13 Saint
12.34. Kevin's parade in the city of Dublin, Wood quay ward, merchant,
12.35. hereinafter called the vendor, and sold and delivered to Michael E.
12.36. Geraghty, esquire, of 29 Arbour hill in the city of Dublin, Arran quay ward,
12.37. gentleman, hereinafter called the purchaser, videlicet, five pounds
12.38. avoirdupois of first choice tea at three shillings and no pence per pound
12.39. avoirdupois and three stone avoirdupois of sugar, crushed crystal, at
12.40. threepence per pound avoirdupois, the said purchaser debtor to the said
12.41. vendor of one pound five shillings and sixpence sterling for value received
12.42. which amount shall be paid by said purchaser to said vendor in weekly
12.43. instalments every seven calendar days of three shillings and no pence
12.44. sterling: and the said nonperishable goods shall not be pawned or pledged
12.45. or sold or otherwise alienated by the said purchaser but shall be and remain
12.46. and be held to be the sole and exclusive property of the said vendor to be
12.47. disposed of at his good will and pleasure until the said amount shall have
12.48. been duly paid by the said purchaser to the said vendor in the manner
12.49. herein set forth as this day hereby agreed between the said vendor, his heirs,
12.50. successors, trustees and assigns of the one part and the said purchaser, his
12.51. heirs, successors, trustees and assigns of the other part. (Underlining mine.)
Moses
Herzog's, 13, St. Kevin's Parade, South Circular Road,
The
one-eyed moneylender Herzog was mocked by
the I-narrator of “Cyclops” who imitates his broken English. This suggests that Herzog was an immigrant
Jew. In the late nineteenth century,
moneylending was a sensitive issue for the Jewish community in both
Britain and
Ireland.20
Anti-Semitism actually existed in Ireland, although it was less
severe
than that in other European countries.
It reached its climax in Limerick in early 1904, when a young
Redemptorist preacher, Father John Creagh (1870-1947), who had lived in
France at
the height of the Dreyfus Affair, led to the boycott that prompted the
departure of several households in the city’s small Jewish community. At the time, Limerick was a city of about
forty thousand people. Poverty was ripe;
in the 1890s and 1900s one Limerick family in ten still lived in a
one-room
tenement (Ó Gráda 191).
Jews in Limerick, like those in other Irish cities, were mainly
middlemen traders. Apart from two “dental
mechanics” and two clergymen, all male household heads and boarders
listed in
the 1901 census were described as peddlers, drapers, or shopkeepers. Most of the community lived in small houses
on Colooney (now Wolfe Tone) Street, half a mile or so west of the city
center (Ó
Gráda 191). One household
in two could
afford a live-in domestic servant in 1901, a sign that Litvak Jewry by
then had
achieved a modicum of comfort and respectability (Ó
Gráda 191).
The events in Limerick are often regarded as the most serious
outbreak
of anti-Semitism in recent Irish history (Ó Gráda 192). Creagh’s sermons led to a
boycott against the
city’s Jewish traders. This not only
prohibited new business; it also led to opportunistic defaulting on
outstanding
debts. Creagh omitted to mention that
Limerick’s most prominent moneylenders were Gentiles.
In the wake of Creagh’s sermons some Jews
were physically assaulted and their property threatened (Ó
Gráda 192). In the
following months several
households in the one hundred and seventy member community left the
city. The decline from one hundred and
seventy in
1901 to one hundred and nineteen a decade later was not entirely due to
the
boycott, although the boycott was still in force in 1905 (Ó
Gráda 192).21
The
Limerick incident is ambiguously implied in "Penelope" in Ulysses: "he [Arthur Griffith] knew there was a
boycott" (U 18.387). This
may refer to the threatened boycott
against Jews in Limerick and a press-boycott involving Griffith's paper
United Irishman in 1904, although the
context also suggests a boycott related to the two Boer Wars.
Also, there are
some other references possibly conveying the anti-Semitic mood in
Ireland at
that time. In the
graveyard scene in
Glasnevin Cemetery in “Hades,” Bloom remembers Mastiansky’s reference
to opium,
then associates the blood sinking into the earth and remembers someone
saying
that those Jews killing the Christian boy is based on the same idea of
perversion of fertility:
Mastiansky
& LB’s reference to the Jewish blood libel:
6.769. flowers of sleep. Chinese cemeteries with giant poppies growing produce the
6.770. best opium Mastiansky told me. The Botanic Gardens are just over there.
6.771. It's the blood sinking in the earth gives new life. Same idea those jews they
6.772. said killed the christian boy. Every man his price. Well preserved fat corpse,
6.773. gentleman, epicure, invaluable for fruit garden. A bargain. By carcass of
6.774. William Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately deceased, three pounds
6.775. thirteen and six. With thanks. (Underlining mine.)
It
is
significant that Bloom just describes the superstitious anti-Semitic
legend
without comment. Later, in Bloom’s
apartment and in the presence of Bloom, Stephen sings the anti-Semitic
ballad
of “Little Harry Hughes and the Duke’s Daughter [Jew’s Daughter]” in
which a
Jewish girl cuts off the head of a Christian boy (U 17.810-28).22 Bloom,
unsmiling and with mixed feelings,
hears the song and silently tries to find “the possible
evidences for and against ritual murder” (U 17.844-49).
Bloom is not a Jew in
strict terms and he “intermarries”
a Catholic woman Molly. As Ó Gráda
argues, Irish Jewry avoided assimilation through intermarriage (Ó Gráda
213). Bloom moved to a tenement of 7,
Eccles Street in North Dublin and lives with his family as a non-Jewish
or “assimilated”
Jew apart from the Jewish community.
Bloom’s financial status is comparatively high, although he does
not own
a home yet. On June 16, 1904, he
received a commission of ￡1 7s 6d, evidently selling
an advertisement (U 7.113), which is precisely one and
two-thirds of Stephen Dedalus’s
weekly earnings.23 In total,
Bloom possesses almost ￡1500 in assets (Osteen 92).
Joyce realistically renders Jewish stereotypes by portraying Bloom and
his Jewish forebears as examples of every type of perceived economic
threat,
from immigrant ragman and hawker to assimilated merchant and financier
(Feistein 41).
Conclusion
Having
selected an “assimilated” Jewish couple as the novel’s central
characters with
numerous detailed descriptions of real Jewish Dubliners, Joyce’s Ulysses left a historical record of how
Jews and Gentiles regarded each other in early twentieth-century
Ireland. Rosemary Horan mentions that “James
Joyce once stated that if Dublin were
destroyed, it could be reconstructed from the text of Ulysses. It is our
[Irish-Jewish people’s] hope that in some way we can reconstruct the
essence of
Jewish Dublin of 1904” (EJAJJU 4). This is a convincing comment of the accuracy
with which Joyce described Irish Jewish people’s lives in Ulysses.
Now, not so many Dubliners recognize the
former Jewish quarter “Little Jerusalem.”
The number of Irish Jews has remarkably declined and most Dublin
Jews moved
to the southern suburbs of Dublin in the mid-twentieth century. However, the Irish Jewish Museum was opened on
the site of Walworth Road Synagogue (which ceased to function in the
mid-1970s)
by the Irish-born 6th President of Israel Dr. Chaim Herzog (1918-1997;
p.1983-1993) on 20th June 1985. Together
with the museum, Joyce’s Ulysses
greatly evoked Gentile people’s attention to Irish Jews.
Joyce had many good “assimilated” Jewish friends throughout his
life. He definitely knew the tremendous
effect of employing a nowhere cosmopolitans or wandering Jew belonging
to “a
nation without a country” as the protagonist of his Dublin-setting
novel. With the Jewish protagonist and
other Jewish
elements Ulysses gained a
cosmopolitan status in world literature.
Notes
*This is a
revised version of the paper presented at IASIL 2007, University
College Dublin, Ireland, July 17, 2007.
**This research is granted Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) (No. 18520223)
by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science under the title of “James Joyce and
Orientalism.”
1. Cf. EJAJJU 4: "Further evidence of an early date is the fact that Ballybough
Cemetery in Fairview, just north of Dublin, was in use from the early 18th century
onwards."
2. St. Mary’s Private Hospital, 38, Eccles Street, is not included for the calculation
because no valuation
was shown in the entry.
3. Main reference: EJAJJU 4.
4. According to the “List of the Nobility, Gentry, Merchants, and Traders, Public
Officers, &c., &c.” of Thom’s 1904, he is noted: “Abramovitz, Rev. Leopold,
Jewish minister, 3 Kevin’s road.”
5. 3, Blackpitts was not recorded in Thom’s 1904, probably because Blackpitts were full
of small cottages for artisans.
6. According to Thom's 1904, the house was occupied by Mr. E. Tucker.
7. According to Thom's 1904, the house was occupied by Mr. T. Freedman and Mrs.
S. Bloom.
8. Thom's 1904 only records houses from no.1 to no. 25 of St. Kevin's Parade, and it
notes, "17 Citron, Mr. J. 16l. [￡16]." However, as Joyce purposely (?) used the wrong
house number in the text of Ulysses (U 7.219-20), Citron is supposed to have lived in
28, St. Kevin's Parade in Joyce's fictional world.
9. His name is recorded as "Herzog, Mr. M." in Thom's 1904.
10. As Hyman notes, Philip Masliansky lived at 2, Martin Street in 1896, and at 63,
Lombard Street West in 1899-1900, and from 1900 to 1906 at 16, St. Kevin's
Parade (Hyman 189). Thom's Directories record him as Phinis (sic) Mosliansky in 1899
and 1900, as P. Masliansky in 1901 and as P. Mastiansky in 1902-1906 (Hyman 189).
11. According to Thom's 1904, the house was occupied by Mr. Alexander Mitafsky.
12. The Irish Jewish Museum is in possession of a photograph of the Moisel family,
which features the daughter Rebecca:
(Courtesy
of the Irish Jewish Museum)*
13. A good example of such a change was the name Good. Judge Herman Good was
the son of the Rev. Gudansky. The name Bloom may originally have been Blum,
Roseblum, etc. (EJAJJU 9).
14. Cf. Thom's 1904.
15. Cf. Thom's 1904.
16. Cf. Thom's 1904. Hammond Street, Blackpits had 55 small cottages (￡4 15s to ￡6)
for artisans. Probably he lived at one of them.
17. The original documents of this appointment, bearing the seal of Ferdinand, are in
the possession of the Irish Jewish Museum (EJAJJU 9):
(Courtesy
of the Irish Jewish Museum)*
19. Cf. Ó Gráda, 64-66: The nature of the unlicensed money lenders’ operations almost
certainly entailed higher interest charges. They operated outside the law in an
equilibrium involving higher costs, higher interest charges, smaller loans, and higher
default rates. Most Jewish moneylenders lived within the law, however, and relied
on the courts to enforce their contracts. They did not resort to the violent tactics
used by some illegal operators (Ó Gráda 66).
20. In 1898, when legislative controls on moneylending were imminent, Sir George Lewis
testified to a parliamentary inquiry (Ó Gráda 66):
I know that the Jewish community despise and loathe these men and their trade;
they are not allowed any public position in the community; they are utterly ignored;
the Jewish clergy preach against them and their usury in the synagogues; and I may
say this because I know it of my own knowledge. I am myself a Jew. (Ó Gráda 66)
Lewis continued with remarks that reflected the hostility of many in his own
anglicized community to its immigrant coreligionists (Ó Gráda 66):
It is impossible that the community can do anything with these men, who come over
from Poland, Jerusalem and other places, and start themselves up on this way, but
they would be only glad to see them to put down and abolished altogether, and
imprisoned. (Ó Gráda 66)
21. The Catholic bishop of Limerick, Dr. Edward O’Dwyer (1842-1917), was criticized
both at the time and later for not condemning Creagh and the boycott publicly. In
private, O’Dwyer tried to intervene, but he had little ecclesiastical authority over
Creagh. Moreover, he had little sympathy for the local Jewish community (Ó
Gráda 193).
22. Cf. Don Gifford,“Ulysses” Annotated, 579. Gifford refers to English and Scottish
Popular Ballads (eds. Francis James Child and George Lyman Kittredge, Cambridge,
1904). The ballad “Little Harry Hughes and the Duke’s Daughter” is a variant of
“Sir Hugh; or, the Jew’s Daughter” (No. 155). As Gifford notes, its substitutes
“Duke’s Daughter” for “Jew’s Daughter” in genteel avoidance of the ballad’s
“anti-Semitism.” The original story from which the ballad derives is of a boy, High
of Lincoln, supposedly crucified by Jews in c.1255 (Gifford 579).
23. Cf. Osteen, 92. Bloom has a ￡500 life insurance policy, a savings account of
￡18-14-6, and ￡900 worth of the Canadian government stock at 4 percent, free of
stamp duty (U 17.1856-65). His stock earns him ￡6 per year.
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*I am indebted to Curator Raphael V. Siev of the Irish Jewish Museum for granting permission to reproduce the photograph of the Moisel family and take a photo of the document of Maurice E. Solomons’ appointment to use for this article.
