Final Day in Dublin, 22/01/2012:

Sunday was our final day in Dublin. Since most of the shops and museums open late on Sundays (Catholic country and all), my parents and I headed to the Dublin Jewish Museum in the old Jewish quarter. The museum was in a small, two-story house that used to be synagogue.

I had never though of Dublin (or Ireland) as being particularly Jewish, and my assumption was mostly correct. The museum highlighted the Jewish history of Dublin until 1985 (the founding of the museum) and it was fairly short. Small groups of Jews came to Ireland, but the population never exceeded 5,000. As the Irish emigrated during times of hardship, so did the Irish Jews, thus reducing the population.

Currently, there are less than 1,000 Jews in the greater Dublin area and most of them live in the suburbs. As the need for synagogues within the city decreased, this synagogue was converted to a museum. Upstairs, most of the sanctuary is intact, and it feels a bit like a ghost town, since I would expect people to soon sit down to pray but I know that they will never come.

The museum was small, so we decided to walk back to our hotel through St. Stephen’s Green one last time before leaving for the airport. I guess Sunday worship had just ended, because the park was full of families enjoying the (rare) sunshine and having lunch. I snapped a few pictures of some of the fun.

Dublin, 18/01/2012:

My parents and I arrived in Dublin yesterday afternoon. After a short cab ride from the airport, during which our cabbie caught us up on local history and showed us three or four “real Irish pubs”, we arrived at our hotel. We are staying right in the center of south Dublin, across from St. Stephen’s Green and a few blocks from Trinity College. 

This morning, my dad and I walked through the green. True to all expectations, it’s very green. It’s also much more of a park, in the American sense, than the greens in London, which were simply open areas of grass. St. Stephen’s Green has plenty of wildlife, a little river, a gazebo, a play structure for children, and numerous statues of famous Irishmen (including the obligatory statue of James Joyce). 

Image descriptions:

  1. A bird in flight over the water.
  2. A bird standing on the edge of the water.
  3. A “Handsel and Gretel” cottage near the edge of the green.
  4. A statue in honor of the Irish people who helped the German children in World War II.