Dublin’s overcast skies greeted some travel-weary journalists on our last morning in Ireland. Weary, maybe, but still humming melodies from last night’s spontaneous musical revelry at O’Donoghue’s pub on Merrion Row. Once the clock had struck midnight, Emma Goldman, our Manhattanite-cum-Dubliner starlet, sang the Irish under the table. From “Long Black Veil” to “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” her siren songs drew admiring crowds—though we can’t dismiss Niall O’Dowd’s rare talent for attracting passersby to our table. Whatever the method, the Columbia crew managed to round up a sizeable chorus of Irish balladeers, who joined us in song until the wee morning hours.
In the morning, students peeled themselves out of bed to eat a final Irish breakfast at the Camden Court Hotel. Robbie Corey-Boulet managed to attend an 8 a.m. Easter mass. Some stayed in the hotel to pack. An ambitious crew continued to the Irish Jewish Museum at 3 Walworth Road in the Portobello section of Dublin.
Raphael Siev, the museum’s curator, greeted Columbia students at 10 a.m. with some Irish-Jewish history and a tour of the museum. From Torah covers to Jewish business cards, the converted synagogue burst at the seams with seemingly arbitrary relics of Dublin’s Jewish memory.
“My first thought was New York apartment,” said Melanie Huff. “You got the feeling that if it was Jewish, it belonged.”
Six students explored the main room, which was lined with glass cases crammed with Jewish artifacts.
“For me it was going into the most interesting grandmother’s attic ever,” said Debra Katz. “It was a big dusty jumble of Jewish history.”
Siev explained that Russian Jews streamed into Ireland as they escaped pogroms. Jewish communities developed not just in Dublin, but also in other port towns around Ireland including Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Drogheda, Belfast, and Derry. Dublin’s Jewish population approximately doubled from 1,100 to 2,300 between 1881 and 1901, supporting more than nine synagogues. In the 1970s, Dublin’s Jewish families started to move to the suburbs, and older generations were dying out. The synagogue, which houses the museum, closed and remained locked until 1984 when the community decided to convert the building. Chaim Herzog, the Irish born former president of Israel and son to Ireland’s first chief rabbi, inaugurated the museum’s opening in June of 1985.
“It’s very inspiring that that Raphael is able to keep alive this little legacy of the Dublin Jewish community,” said Sharon Usadin. “It’s very important to Jewish people when there are so few left.”
The group reconvened with the remaining Columbia students at 12:30 to load our bags onto the C.I.E. tour bus. Professor Goldman bid us farewell—he plans to spend another night in Dublin to observe the Easter holiday—and sang one last round of “Boker,” his daily morning song. “Boker” means “morning” in Hebrew, and the song is a lasting tradition from his previous Covering Religion trip to Israel. “Boker” eventually morphed into “Maidin” which means “morning” in Irish by the end of the trip.
Goldman also reminded us of the looming “d” word: deadline. We’ll have one week to perform the alchemy of turning scribbled notes and reels of tape into journalism. After 10 days of dogged reporting, some students have managed to whip up an impressive number of stories with an Ireland dateline.
On our ride to the Dublin airport, we squeezed every last note from our resident singers. Emma Goldman agreed to an encore performance of “Long Black Veil.” John Byrne cleared his pipes for “On Raglan Road.” Only after persistence on the part of our intrepid reporters did he concede to a “blast of Lisdoonvarna,” his smash single. Jamie McGee and Eileen He treated us to their new hit “Conn Corrigan,” a tune that, much to Corrigan’s chagrin, will likely ring through the J-school’s halls upon our return.
We said our goodbyes to Byrne, who handed off the last of the articles he’d been clipping throughout the trip to his former passengers. We rolled and heaved luggage puffy with Aran Island sweaters to the check in. The group passed through security and dispersed to duty-free shops and snack bars.
In the moments before boarding, exhaustion triumphed over eloquence. Andrew Nusca felt the trip was “fab.” Other students reveled in glossy magazines and bags of candy. Many anticipate the New York homecoming, but Rachel King remained nostalgic: “Everyone here is so friendly and everything is so clean. But New York is an OK place to go back to.”
We endured over an hour on the plane before takeoff due to a computer shutdown in the terminal. But at 5:15 p.m. Aer Lingus flight 107 finally coasted down the runway. The patchwork of Ireland’s green fields shrank beneath us. It took just minutes to break through the clouds and leave our 10 days in Ireland behind.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Day 9: Free Day in Dublin’s Fair City
Taking advantage of a free day, many of us branched off to shop, visit museums or explore other attractions in
Canal water, preferably, so stilly
Greeny at the heart of summer. Brother
Commemorate me thus beautifully
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Day 9: Holy Saturday, Shabbos Kodesh
Photo: Andrew Nusca
Kilmainham "Hilton" cell block (Photo: Rachel J. King)
Easter Rising memorial placard, Kilmainham Gaol (Photo: Rachel J. King)
Chapel organ, Trinity College, Dublin (Photo: Andrew Nusca)
Chapel at Trinity College Dublin (Photo: Rachel J. King)
Local poses for picture in St. Stephen's Park (Photo: Andrew Nusca)
Day 8: Dublin: Past and Present
Two members of the Irish police, called the Garda Síochána, were the first people we met as we traveled back into the Republic of Ireland this morning. They were not there to welcome us, but pulled us over to check our passports, another indication of how the political climate and demographics have changed in Ireland. Professor Niall O’Dowd explained that during the Troubles – the paramilitary conflict between Loyalists and Republicans – police conduct searches at the borders for weaponry. Today they are looking for illegal immigrants.
We pulled into Dublin, and our first attraction was the General Post Office that was destroyed in the Easter Uprising in 1916. As it was Good Friday, storefronts were shuttered down and bars and some museums were closed. John Byrne, our tour guide said there have been efforts to lift a prohibition ban on Good Friday, but the ban is not vehemently opposed. “I suppose 363 days is enough,” he said.
We spent the first part of our afternoon at the Islamic Cultural Center of Ireland, one of two mosques in Dublin. The males in our group joined the more than 700 men on the first floor while the females in our group, each wearing headscarves, sat upstairs with about 200 women. The faces in the mosque reflected the growing immigrant population in Ireland from countries around the world, but also included those born in Ireland. “I met two women who had converted from Catholicism,” Sarah Morgan said.
The mosque, built in 1979, felt open and expansive, with tall ceilings and a large dome space in the ceiling’s center. “The building got my attention,” said Pilar Conci. “It was big and new. None of the mosques I went to in New York were like this.”
During the service, Imam Hussein Halawa spoke in Arabic and then the mosque secretary translated the sermon in English. Halawa, who came to Ireland from Egypt in 1996, spoke emphatically, even yelling at times. The congregation prayed together, standing in perfect rows and kneeling their heads to the ground. Betwa Sharma said she enjoyed listening to the prayers in such a large crowd. “I liked when they all said “amen” – the echoing,” she said. “I liked that we got to hear that.”
O’Dowd said the mosque was a powerful experience for him because it reflected the country’s recent increase in diversity. “It has transformed dramatically,” he said. “I lived in Dublin 10 years. I never met a Muslim. Today I saw 1,000. The diversity is incredible.”
After the mosque, some students explored and reported in Dublin, while others went to the Hill of Tara, where St. Patrick achieved victory over pagan druids in the fifth century. With strong winds roaring around us, we walked up a hill to see monuments dating from 3500 B.C. to the seventh century A.D. Two rings of man-made ridges mark the hill’s crown. In the middle of one ring, a circle of stones surround a phallic monument called Lia Fáil, or stone of destiny, where the High Kings of Ireland were crowned. Legend goes that if the would-be king met a series of challenges, the stone would cry out. When O’Dowd placed his hand on the stone, a call was heard; however, some observers suspected it was self-manifested.
The green hill stretched out for miles and a herd of sheep grazed near the monuments. Their peaceful afternoon was interrupted, however, when Sharon Udasin and Rachel King pursued them with clicking cameras.
“I went to say hi to them and they ran away from me,” Udasin said on her return to the group.
Rather than visiting the Hill of Tara, Laura Isensee was among those who stayed in Dublin to explore the city. The group had been warned that shops were closed, so Isensee said she was surprised to discover Easter sales. “It’s a sign of the times,” she said. “Stores are open and they are having Easter sales. And at the hotel, they served alcohol at dinner. It didn’t feel like Good Friday.”
O’Dowd said he also noticed a change in Dublin’s atmosphere that has developed over recent decades. “Years ago, Aran sweaters represented all of Ireland,” he said. “Now it’s U2 and there are movies made here. It’s a hip place now.”
The day concluded with an evening gathering dubbed "trip prom" at the hotel where we celebrated and reflected on our week with toasts and gifts for the trip leaders. The holiday prevented us from touring the Dublin pubs, but after a busy reporting week, some students were grateful for an early night.
“It’s a forced opportunity to sleep,” Liz Bello said. “Now we will have energy to go to the pubs tomorrow.”
We pulled into Dublin, and our first attraction was the General Post Office that was destroyed in the Easter Uprising in 1916. As it was Good Friday, storefronts were shuttered down and bars and some museums were closed. John Byrne, our tour guide said there have been efforts to lift a prohibition ban on Good Friday, but the ban is not vehemently opposed. “I suppose 363 days is enough,” he said.
We spent the first part of our afternoon at the Islamic Cultural Center of Ireland, one of two mosques in Dublin. The males in our group joined the more than 700 men on the first floor while the females in our group, each wearing headscarves, sat upstairs with about 200 women. The faces in the mosque reflected the growing immigrant population in Ireland from countries around the world, but also included those born in Ireland. “I met two women who had converted from Catholicism,” Sarah Morgan said.
The mosque, built in 1979, felt open and expansive, with tall ceilings and a large dome space in the ceiling’s center. “The building got my attention,” said Pilar Conci. “It was big and new. None of the mosques I went to in New York were like this.”During the service, Imam Hussein Halawa spoke in Arabic and then the mosque secretary translated the sermon in English. Halawa, who came to Ireland from Egypt in 1996, spoke emphatically, even yelling at times. The congregation prayed together, standing in perfect rows and kneeling their heads to the ground. Betwa Sharma said she enjoyed listening to the prayers in such a large crowd. “I liked when they all said “amen” – the echoing,” she said. “I liked that we got to hear that.”
O’Dowd said the mosque was a powerful experience for him because it reflected the country’s recent increase in diversity. “It has transformed dramatically,” he said. “I lived in Dublin 10 years. I never met a Muslim. Today I saw 1,000. The diversity is incredible.”
After the mosque, some students explored and reported in Dublin, while others went to the Hill of Tara, where St. Patrick achieved victory over pagan druids in the fifth century. With strong winds roaring around us, we walked up a hill to see monuments dating from 3500 B.C. to the seventh century A.D. Two rings of man-made ridges mark the hill’s crown. In the middle of one ring, a circle of stones surround a phallic monument called Lia Fáil, or stone of destiny, where the High Kings of Ireland were crowned. Legend goes that if the would-be king met a series of challenges, the stone would cry out. When O’Dowd placed his hand on the stone, a call was heard; however, some observers suspected it was self-manifested.
The green hill stretched out for miles and a herd of sheep grazed near the monuments. Their peaceful afternoon was interrupted, however, when Sharon Udasin and Rachel King pursued them with clicking cameras.
“I went to say hi to them and they ran away from me,” Udasin said on her return to the group.
Rather than visiting the Hill of Tara, Laura Isensee was among those who stayed in Dublin to explore the city. The group had been warned that shops were closed, so Isensee said she was surprised to discover Easter sales. “It’s a sign of the times,” she said. “Stores are open and they are having Easter sales. And at the hotel, they served alcohol at dinner. It didn’t feel like Good Friday.”
O’Dowd said he also noticed a change in Dublin’s atmosphere that has developed over recent decades. “Years ago, Aran sweaters represented all of Ireland,” he said. “Now it’s U2 and there are movies made here. It’s a hip place now.”
The day concluded with an evening gathering dubbed "trip prom" at the hotel where we celebrated and reflected on our week with toasts and gifts for the trip leaders. The holiday prevented us from touring the Dublin pubs, but after a busy reporting week, some students were grateful for an early night.
“It’s a forced opportunity to sleep,” Liz Bello said. “Now we will have energy to go to the pubs tomorrow.”
Friday, March 21, 2008
Day Seven: Peace Line and Purim
Photo: Rachel J. King
Photo: Andrew Nusca
Photo: Pilar Conci
Photo: Rachel J. King
Photo: Rachel J. King
Day Seven: Peace Line and Purim
Waking up cozily in Europe’s most bombed hotel, we each embarked in different directions on this rainy Belfast morning, where we had two hours to report stories independently. Despite our different agendas, we were all excited to welcome our second professor, Niall O’Dowd, to the trip, after he arrived on a turbulent flight from New York yesterday.
After breakfast, Laura Insensee and Deborah Lee-Hjelle explored a section of Belfast called “the village,” where they interviewed some migrant workers, including an Albanian Muslim family. Meanwhile, Robbie Corey-Boulet visited an Anglican church that had initiated talks with a neighboring mosque in the aftermath of post-9/11 hate crimes. Debra Katz and Andrew Nusca wandered around the city taking pictures of historical graffiti and murals, while other students reported from their hotel rooms.
At 11:30 a.m., the nine students who had returned from reporting boarded the bus for a short drive to the Shankill Methodist Church in West Belfast. As we got off the bus, the Reverend Jim Rea greeted the group rather skeptically and ushered us into the church. Inside was a no-frills, high-ceiling sanctuary, with a simple gold cross balanced on the altar and the words “This Do In Remembrance of Me” etched in the wood below. Rea brusquely introduced himself and opened the floor for questioning, with a blatant distrust of the Americans congregated before him.
“An awful lot of people died in this area,” Rea said. “There is a peace line that divides the community.” Today, although tensions have quieted and violence has mostly subsided, the Shankill neighborhood still experiences what Rea calls “recreational rioting.” Such smalls crimes and stone throwing incidents may occur during more uproarious events like community marches. But the leading parties like Sinn Fein support the police and want to rid the streets of such violence. “The big political players don’t want things to happen that will unhinge the political process,” Rea said.
Within Shankill’s dwindling population, Rea sees a dramatic increase in secularization, as people move away from both religion and the neighborhood. Three local Methodist churches have combined their congregations in one.
Aboard the bus for a tour of the neighborhood, Rea seemed to warm up slightly to us, and he guided us to the peace line, a 20-mile blockade that separates the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods of Belfast. Built only five years ago, the peace wall was erected in order to prevent violence from seeping through. Varying slightly in height and girth from section to section, the wall was mostly beige cinderblocks, with curls of thorny barbed wire decorated the top. Graffitti scrawls and giant murals covered the sides, alternating from Nationalist to Loyalist themes. Of particular interest to many students on the bus were the pro-Palestinian murals in a Nationalist section, with images of Israeli soldiers and Arabic slogans.
After about 45 minutes of weaving the ponderous bus through the nooks and crannies of West Belfest, we dropped the reverend back at his church. Everyone breathed a bit easier, as he left the vehicle and a brewing tension subsided.
“I thought I was in a bad mood today,” Professor Goldman said, referring to Rea’s icy attitude towards us.
Professor O’Dowd didn’t quite agree with Goldman’s assessment. “I thought he was actually quite gracious,” he said. “Just remember where this guy was…this is a traumatized community.”
The bus rolled to a stop outside of the Sinn Fein headquarters, where we were a half hour early for our 1 p.m. meeting with Gerry Adams, the leader of the Sinn Fein party. Unsure what to do with our spare time, we huddled inside the shelter of a uniquely perfumed bar, which shared much in common with the New York City subways.
“It smells like a urinal,” Andrew Nusca said.
Urinal or not, students and professors sat down at a wooden table to drink some water and tea.
“Only a Jewish guy from New York would go into an Irish bar and order tea,” O’Dowd said, chuckling at Goldman’s beverage choice.
O’Dowd prepared us for our ensuing visit with the politician, acquainting us with Adams’ background and contributions to the peace processes. Describing him as a defining figure in Irish nationalism, O’Dowd discussed how despite all odds, Adams was able to hold the movement together with Martin McGuiness, current deputy minister of the new power-sharing government. After years of imprisonment, Adams didn’t even see his son till the boy turned four years old.
“Can he take it to the next stage?” O’Dowd questioned. “I don’t think he can.” He explained that Northern Ireland will probably need a younger successor to follow Adams and McGinnis in bridging the gap towards peace, someone who has less baggage and is unassociated with violence of years past.
At 1 p.m., we shuffled down the street to the Sinn Fein building, where we joined the rest of the students who had been out reporting. In true J-School style, nine cameras, one video camera and four voice recorders rested on the table, waiting for Adams’ arrival. After waiting about five minutes in anticipation, the door opened – but Zach Goelman walked through the door rather than Gerry Adams. Both Emma and Adam Goldman followed in suit, armed with a collection of shopping bags. Emma accidentally claimed head of the table, until her father dissuaded her from supplanting the Sinn Fein leader.
After 15 more minutes, Adams entered the room, in a peppery gray beard and a casual blue button-down shirt with a yellow tie.
“The conflict in Ireland is not a religious conflict,” Adams said. “Religion doesn’t matter, shouldn’t matter.” He acknowledges that there has been a longstanding cleavage between Catholicism and Protestantism but feels that the divide was never about theology.
As far as his personal beliefs, Adams disapproves of certain elements of Catholicism, particularly bothered by the fact that women cannot be ordained as priests. He finds the Methodists to be the most progressive Christians – the group who first began talking to Sinn Fein.
“I’m sort of an a la carte Catholic-Buddhist,” Adams said.
When asked about the endurance of the Good Friday agreement, Adams stressed the continued importance of diplomatic negotiations instead of weaponry. “You needed to have an alternative – to pursue republican objectives through unarmed conflict.”
Crucial to the onset of these agreements was the United States, Adams confirmed, citing our own Niall O’Dowd as one of the critical liaisons between the Northern Irish opponents and Bill Clinton. Today, Adams commends the dual government, shared by unionist Ian Paisley and nationalist Mark McGinnis, whom he calls “Siamese twins.” As Paisley transitions out of the first minister position this spring, Adams foresees a possible resurgence of turbulence.
“Unionism has to adjust to be without this iconic figure,” he said. Meanwhile, he stressed that Nationalists have to treat Unionists as well as possible, ensuring them equality should Ireland ever fully unite.
“If you don’t talk to people, if you don’t listen to people, there can’t be progress,” Adams said. “How do you make peace with someone who killed your brother?”
At the end of our private session with Adams, we followed him outside of the Sinn Fein headquarters, where he was conducting a “doorstop” open meeting with members of the Belfast media. After finishing up television interview, Adams himself requested a group photo with our entire class. Luckily, his assistant was dramatically more skilled in photography than was Desmond, yesterday’s host at the Buddhist monastery.
After lunch and a second bus tour of the city, the group gathered in the hotel restaurant for a buffet-style dinner. At 7 p.m., we left for the Orthodox Hebrew Congregation, to celebrate the Jewish festival of Purim.
Capped in a golden speckled party hat, Rabbi Menachem Brackman, 26, led Purim services, wrapped in a long black coat and sporting a characteristically Hasidic beard. Brackman and his wife Ruth, 22, moved with their six-month-old son to Belfast only five and a half weeks ago, to take over the vacated rabbinical position. Part of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, the young couple are beginning a six-month trial period as a team in Belfast, before deciding whether or not they would like to be official Chabad shluchim (emissaries). Although the Jewish community has been a fixture in Belfast for the past 150 years, the congregation has fallen to 108 members, with sparse access to kosher foods and Jewish life.
Yet both Menachem and Ruth Brackman were pleased with the evening’s turnout, a gathering of nearly 50 congregants. Among the participants this evening were longtime residents, recent migrants from Israel and our class of course. Rabbi Brackman whizzed through the Megillah reading at turbo speed, pausing occasionally to catch his breath. Jews and non-Jews alike clanked their noisemakers and banged on the glossy wooden pews, every time he voiced Haman’s name.
“I enjoyed it,” said John Byrne, our tour guide, who had never been to a Jewish service before. “It surprised me that it wasn’t a bit more reverential.”
After the service, congregants and visitors gathered together in the lobby and hall attached to the sanctuary, where they shared hamantashen, coffee and conversation. Brackman made his rounds dispensing shots of Scotch whiskey and quietly disappeared to reemerge as a full-feathered yellow chicken, to conduct a costume contest.
“I really enjoyed the costume,” Robbie Corey-Boulet said. “I thought the giant chicken was robbed – but he was the rabbi.”
The few children attending the service flocked around the rabbi in their elaborate costumes, which most notably featured Spiderman and a giant banana. Despite these scattered young faces, the average age in the synagogue is over 75 years old, according to Edwin Coppel, 64, the chairman of the congregation. The community itself has been in Belfast since approximately 1850, with the first synagogue opening officially in 1904 and the second in 1964. Coppel has been a member of the community for his entire life and laments its continual decrease in population.
“Unless we get the message out, we don’t get the support from our community,” he said. “It’s really a question of being more cohesive in our efforts.”
However, the congregation faces difficulties bringing the community together because potential members cannot attend services very regularly, unless they were to drive to the synagogue.
“We live in Northern Ireland and come to all the festivals,” said Moira Jackson, who met her husband in Israel in 1980, where they both converted to Judaism. The Jacksons are not yet full-fledged members, in part because they cannot walk 12 miles from home to synagogue on Shabbat.
Northern Irish Jews find sanctuary in a community where for once they aren’t a minority and can enjoy common traditions of generations past. Although they find very few Jewish people walking the streets of Belfast, they rarely face anti-Semitism and find that the majority population is very accepting of their culture.
“The Protestants and the Catholics were too concerned with each other to bother with the Jewish people – we were left pretty well alone,” Coppel said. But since the end of the troubles, the congregation has become involved in interfaith dialogues and even hosts council meetings between Jews and Christians. “If people can see you, at least they know you’re not walking around with horns,” he said.
After breakfast, Laura Insensee and Deborah Lee-Hjelle explored a section of Belfast called “the village,” where they interviewed some migrant workers, including an Albanian Muslim family. Meanwhile, Robbie Corey-Boulet visited an Anglican church that had initiated talks with a neighboring mosque in the aftermath of post-9/11 hate crimes. Debra Katz and Andrew Nusca wandered around the city taking pictures of historical graffiti and murals, while other students reported from their hotel rooms.
At 11:30 a.m., the nine students who had returned from reporting boarded the bus for a short drive to the Shankill Methodist Church in West Belfast. As we got off the bus, the Reverend Jim Rea greeted the group rather skeptically and ushered us into the church. Inside was a no-frills, high-ceiling sanctuary, with a simple gold cross balanced on the altar and the words “This Do In Remembrance of Me” etched in the wood below. Rea brusquely introduced himself and opened the floor for questioning, with a blatant distrust of the Americans congregated before him.
“An awful lot of people died in this area,” Rea said. “There is a peace line that divides the community.” Today, although tensions have quieted and violence has mostly subsided, the Shankill neighborhood still experiences what Rea calls “recreational rioting.” Such smalls crimes and stone throwing incidents may occur during more uproarious events like community marches. But the leading parties like Sinn Fein support the police and want to rid the streets of such violence. “The big political players don’t want things to happen that will unhinge the political process,” Rea said.
Within Shankill’s dwindling population, Rea sees a dramatic increase in secularization, as people move away from both religion and the neighborhood. Three local Methodist churches have combined their congregations in one.
Aboard the bus for a tour of the neighborhood, Rea seemed to warm up slightly to us, and he guided us to the peace line, a 20-mile blockade that separates the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods of Belfast. Built only five years ago, the peace wall was erected in order to prevent violence from seeping through. Varying slightly in height and girth from section to section, the wall was mostly beige cinderblocks, with curls of thorny barbed wire decorated the top. Graffitti scrawls and giant murals covered the sides, alternating from Nationalist to Loyalist themes. Of particular interest to many students on the bus were the pro-Palestinian murals in a Nationalist section, with images of Israeli soldiers and Arabic slogans.
After about 45 minutes of weaving the ponderous bus through the nooks and crannies of West Belfest, we dropped the reverend back at his church. Everyone breathed a bit easier, as he left the vehicle and a brewing tension subsided.
“I thought I was in a bad mood today,” Professor Goldman said, referring to Rea’s icy attitude towards us.
Professor O’Dowd didn’t quite agree with Goldman’s assessment. “I thought he was actually quite gracious,” he said. “Just remember where this guy was…this is a traumatized community.”
The bus rolled to a stop outside of the Sinn Fein headquarters, where we were a half hour early for our 1 p.m. meeting with Gerry Adams, the leader of the Sinn Fein party. Unsure what to do with our spare time, we huddled inside the shelter of a uniquely perfumed bar, which shared much in common with the New York City subways.
“It smells like a urinal,” Andrew Nusca said.
Urinal or not, students and professors sat down at a wooden table to drink some water and tea.
“Only a Jewish guy from New York would go into an Irish bar and order tea,” O’Dowd said, chuckling at Goldman’s beverage choice.
O’Dowd prepared us for our ensuing visit with the politician, acquainting us with Adams’ background and contributions to the peace processes. Describing him as a defining figure in Irish nationalism, O’Dowd discussed how despite all odds, Adams was able to hold the movement together with Martin McGuiness, current deputy minister of the new power-sharing government. After years of imprisonment, Adams didn’t even see his son till the boy turned four years old.
“Can he take it to the next stage?” O’Dowd questioned. “I don’t think he can.” He explained that Northern Ireland will probably need a younger successor to follow Adams and McGinnis in bridging the gap towards peace, someone who has less baggage and is unassociated with violence of years past.
At 1 p.m., we shuffled down the street to the Sinn Fein building, where we joined the rest of the students who had been out reporting. In true J-School style, nine cameras, one video camera and four voice recorders rested on the table, waiting for Adams’ arrival. After waiting about five minutes in anticipation, the door opened – but Zach Goelman walked through the door rather than Gerry Adams. Both Emma and Adam Goldman followed in suit, armed with a collection of shopping bags. Emma accidentally claimed head of the table, until her father dissuaded her from supplanting the Sinn Fein leader.
After 15 more minutes, Adams entered the room, in a peppery gray beard and a casual blue button-down shirt with a yellow tie.
“The conflict in Ireland is not a religious conflict,” Adams said. “Religion doesn’t matter, shouldn’t matter.” He acknowledges that there has been a longstanding cleavage between Catholicism and Protestantism but feels that the divide was never about theology.
As far as his personal beliefs, Adams disapproves of certain elements of Catholicism, particularly bothered by the fact that women cannot be ordained as priests. He finds the Methodists to be the most progressive Christians – the group who first began talking to Sinn Fein.
“I’m sort of an a la carte Catholic-Buddhist,” Adams said.
When asked about the endurance of the Good Friday agreement, Adams stressed the continued importance of diplomatic negotiations instead of weaponry. “You needed to have an alternative – to pursue republican objectives through unarmed conflict.”
Crucial to the onset of these agreements was the United States, Adams confirmed, citing our own Niall O’Dowd as one of the critical liaisons between the Northern Irish opponents and Bill Clinton. Today, Adams commends the dual government, shared by unionist Ian Paisley and nationalist Mark McGinnis, whom he calls “Siamese twins.” As Paisley transitions out of the first minister position this spring, Adams foresees a possible resurgence of turbulence.
“Unionism has to adjust to be without this iconic figure,” he said. Meanwhile, he stressed that Nationalists have to treat Unionists as well as possible, ensuring them equality should Ireland ever fully unite.
“If you don’t talk to people, if you don’t listen to people, there can’t be progress,” Adams said. “How do you make peace with someone who killed your brother?”
At the end of our private session with Adams, we followed him outside of the Sinn Fein headquarters, where he was conducting a “doorstop” open meeting with members of the Belfast media. After finishing up television interview, Adams himself requested a group photo with our entire class. Luckily, his assistant was dramatically more skilled in photography than was Desmond, yesterday’s host at the Buddhist monastery.
After lunch and a second bus tour of the city, the group gathered in the hotel restaurant for a buffet-style dinner. At 7 p.m., we left for the Orthodox Hebrew Congregation, to celebrate the Jewish festival of Purim.
Capped in a golden speckled party hat, Rabbi Menachem Brackman, 26, led Purim services, wrapped in a long black coat and sporting a characteristically Hasidic beard. Brackman and his wife Ruth, 22, moved with their six-month-old son to Belfast only five and a half weeks ago, to take over the vacated rabbinical position. Part of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, the young couple are beginning a six-month trial period as a team in Belfast, before deciding whether or not they would like to be official Chabad shluchim (emissaries). Although the Jewish community has been a fixture in Belfast for the past 150 years, the congregation has fallen to 108 members, with sparse access to kosher foods and Jewish life.
Yet both Menachem and Ruth Brackman were pleased with the evening’s turnout, a gathering of nearly 50 congregants. Among the participants this evening were longtime residents, recent migrants from Israel and our class of course. Rabbi Brackman whizzed through the Megillah reading at turbo speed, pausing occasionally to catch his breath. Jews and non-Jews alike clanked their noisemakers and banged on the glossy wooden pews, every time he voiced Haman’s name.
“I enjoyed it,” said John Byrne, our tour guide, who had never been to a Jewish service before. “It surprised me that it wasn’t a bit more reverential.”
After the service, congregants and visitors gathered together in the lobby and hall attached to the sanctuary, where they shared hamantashen, coffee and conversation. Brackman made his rounds dispensing shots of Scotch whiskey and quietly disappeared to reemerge as a full-feathered yellow chicken, to conduct a costume contest.
“I really enjoyed the costume,” Robbie Corey-Boulet said. “I thought the giant chicken was robbed – but he was the rabbi.”
The few children attending the service flocked around the rabbi in their elaborate costumes, which most notably featured Spiderman and a giant banana. Despite these scattered young faces, the average age in the synagogue is over 75 years old, according to Edwin Coppel, 64, the chairman of the congregation. The community itself has been in Belfast since approximately 1850, with the first synagogue opening officially in 1904 and the second in 1964. Coppel has been a member of the community for his entire life and laments its continual decrease in population.
“Unless we get the message out, we don’t get the support from our community,” he said. “It’s really a question of being more cohesive in our efforts.”
However, the congregation faces difficulties bringing the community together because potential members cannot attend services very regularly, unless they were to drive to the synagogue.
“We live in Northern Ireland and come to all the festivals,” said Moira Jackson, who met her husband in Israel in 1980, where they both converted to Judaism. The Jacksons are not yet full-fledged members, in part because they cannot walk 12 miles from home to synagogue on Shabbat.
Northern Irish Jews find sanctuary in a community where for once they aren’t a minority and can enjoy common traditions of generations past. Although they find very few Jewish people walking the streets of Belfast, they rarely face anti-Semitism and find that the majority population is very accepting of their culture.
“The Protestants and the Catholics were too concerned with each other to bother with the Jewish people – we were left pretty well alone,” Coppel said. But since the end of the troubles, the congregation has become involved in interfaith dialogues and even hosts council meetings between Jews and Christians. “If people can see you, at least they know you’re not walking around with horns,” he said.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)