An Irish Tragedy
Singing the Irish-Jewish Past — and Mourning its Present
Today is St. Patrick’s Day, and I wish a hearty sláinte to all who are observing.
I grew up near Old Town, Alexandria, a fenian-friendly enclave in Northern Virginia. Its walkable waterfront at one time boasted three Irish pubs with nightly music, plus an authentic Irish chipper with a secret weekend martini bar. Amidst two million DC-area residents of Irish descent, this Jewish communal-singing-junkie found himself regularly surrounded by the trad sessions and pub songs of the Emerald Isle and its American diaspora.
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My wife and I spent half of our honeymoon in Ireland, driving across its lush, green landscape and even guest leading for Shabbat at the Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation. The small Irish-Jewish community, mostly based in Dublin, has been there since the seventeenth century. The Irish capital even was even once home to some well-known Ashkenazi cantors, including Phillip Copperman and Herman Semiatin.1 The latter’s Irish-born sons had creative careers as well — Jacob Semiatin became a successful abstract artist, and Lionel Semiatin was a lifelong composer and synagogue executive director.
The Irish and the Jews have a lot in common: red hair, high levels of literacy, occupation by the British, nineteenth-century nationalism, the American immigrant experience, and even singing on nonsense syllables. It should be no surprise that these two cultures should have ample things to share and exchange.
A recent book by Hasia R. Diner confirms the fruits of this Irish-Jewish synergy. Opening Doors: The Unlikely Alliance between the Irish and the Jews in America (2024) demonstrates how early Irish-Americans and Jewish immigrants worked together to “carve out shared spaces to pursue common goals,” particularly in politics, labor, education, and fighting antisemitism. Together, they built an expanded definition of what it means to be American beyond its majority Protestant heritage. Jean Schwartz and William Jerome captured the creative partnership between these two great groups of American newcomers in building a shared society in their 1912 hit — “If it Wasn’t For the Irish and the Jews.”
In the spirit of this classical American partnership and our many commonalities, I have run a “Yiddish-Irish Pub Sing” for the past three years. Coinciding with the weekend of St. Patrick’s Day (and often near Purim), this pub-in-the-synagogue program brought an Irish band into the synagogue to play songs from our respective cultures. It also gave me an opportunity to play repertoire that reflects this shared Irish-Jewish experience: immigrant songs like “Lebn Zol Kolumbus (Long Live Columbus),” a Jewish equivalent of Finnegan’s wake (“Die Mashke”), a Yiddish sea shanty, and this classic Clancy Brothers number about a Jew falsely accused of being Irish, “Mr. Moses.”
I know that my celebration of Irish-Jewish partnership is focused on the past. This is because the present is so lamentable for Jews, who are subject to the predations of rabid Irish anti-Zionism: Ireland’s age-long antagonism against English sovereignty, abuse, and cultural suppression find its most easy (if lazy) parallel in the modern struggle between Israel and the Palestinians. With Israelis cast as the English and Palestinians as the Irish, it isn’t difficult to understand how the mainline of Irish society, Christian and Muslim, chooses its side. Few Irish will ever meet a Jew in person, and the existing Jewish community keeps a low profile to avoid antisemtic attack. This anti-Israel antagonism is has deep roots in Irish society, going back to its cooperation with the Nazis in World War II.
My questions are musical, yet they stand at the border of politics and ask: what song is there left for the Jew in Ireland?
Ironically, the earliest iterations of Irish nationalism played a distinctly Hebraic tune, looking to the Israelites and the Exodus for inspiration. As Abby Bender points out in her book, Israelites in Erin: Exodus, Revolution, and the Irish Revival (2015):
“From the metaphoric identification of the Irish with enslaved Israelites in seventeenth-century bardic poetry, to the imagining of Home Rule leader Charles Stewart Parnell as Moses, to James Joyce’s envisioning of the promised land as the “new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future,” Exodus provided a narrative of liberation that had potency, religious authority, and— most importantly—the sense of ambivalence about independence that also characterized the Irish experience.”2
Bender demonstrates that the Exodus form of Irish nationalism exhausted itself as independence drew nearer, replaced by the New Testament-inspired, sacrificial Irish nationalism of Patrick Pearse and the Easter Rising. She further questions the utility of the Exodus narrative, which did not “work” to address the “difficulties of liberation” and ultimately of nation-building, armed conflict, and governance.3
Perhaps the Irish could have done with their own form of the Passover Seder, for which Jews will gather in just four weeks time. The seder, which is the most celebrated Jewish event worldwide, re-animates the “work” of the Exodus narrative in each generation, keeping that spirit of unity alive and revisiting its implications. The retelling of the Exodus also forms Jewish national consciousness, which not only undergirds “liberation” but also governance and law, such as the freeing of slaves (Leviticus 25), honesty in business (Leviticus 19) and loving the stranger (Deuteronomy 10).
It may be silly of me to advocate for more the Hebraic discourse in the Hibernia. If one were looking for biblical wisdom for Ireland’s current woes, the books of Samuel and Kings would certainly be good places to start. But I am no Irishman, just a Jew who hearkens to the melody of history. And it isn’t pretty: the abandonment of the Hebraic foundations of Irish nationalism has unfortunately given way to slowly darkening days for its Jews — from indifference during World War II to the contemporary chilling of Jewish life.
Can song and dance yet be heard from such a lamentable state?
One person saying yes, albeit from across the pond, is my colleague and friend Rabbi Cecelia Beyer. “Rabbi Cece,” as she is known on Irish social media, is an American-born rabbi of Irish ancestry who has made a successful launch into competitive Irish cultural arts. She is a Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann Mid-Atlantic Champion in three categories — Irish Singing, English Singing, and Lilting — and has been invited several times to Ireland’s Fleadh Cheoil to perform. She has been interviewed on Irish radio (in Irish!), and stands as a leading Jewish voice in Irish cultural arts.
The Irish and the Jews have a lot in common, and perhaps such mutual celebration will lead to better times.
Yet both of us have a bittersweet realism baked into our traditional songs, singing that although we have each had our liberation, redemption is still over the hills and far away.
Semiatin emigrated to the USA and published several collections of his music. You can hear Cantor Henry Butensky sing Semiatin’s “Hineni” at the FAU Recorded Sound Archive (Track Seven): https://rsa.fau.edu/album/40049.
Bender, Israelites in Erin, 2.
ibid. 180.
I would like to add a musical footnote about the cooperation of the Irish and the Jews in America; it has to do with George and Ira Gershwin's 1931 musical comedy Of Thee I Sing. This play follows the Presidential election campaign of a candidate named John P. Wintergreen. The opening number, "Wintergreen for President," starts with the following lyrics:
Wintergreen for President!
Wintergreen for President!
He's the man the people choose,
(sotto voce) Loves the Irish and the Jews!