Ireland - Friday arrival and Shabbat in Dublin

We arrived in Dublin early Friday morning after a seven hour flight from Toronto. I managed to sleep for a few hours so I was quite refreshed on arrival, but Fran did not manage to sleep and so, was very tired.

We collected our luggage and picked up our rental car from Hertz.

When we exited the airport garage, it was raining and very cloudy. We had rented a manual shift and with the wheel on the right side of the car and driving on the other side to what is "normal" for us, it took a few minutes to adjust to the concept of doing everything opposite. I kept turning on the windshield wipers every time I wished to signal a turn, Fran and I kept getting into the wrong side of the car, etc....gradually we will get the hang of this. It does take concentration not to enter a roundabout going the wrong way against oncoming traffic....😀

We had a 30 minute drive to our rented Airbnb apartment located in Rathgar, a section of Dublin located about 15 minutes from the shul, where we would be spending Shabbat.

Everything went quite smoothly and we arrived in the vicinity of our apartment too early to check in so we headed over to Super Valu, the supermarket with the greatest variety of kosher products in Ireland and then went to Tesco to buy our SIM card. 

If you are planning on travelling to Ireland, the Super Valu branch in Churchtown, Dublin, is the place to stock up on all your kosher needs. There is a rather extensive list of kosher approved items that are available all over Ireland on the regular shelves in any supermarket, but for kosher items such as cheeses, meat and chicken (both raw frozen and prepared), as well as salamis, cold cuts, TV dinners, yogurts, herring and smoked fish, grape juice, humus and Israeli salads, and a shelf section of packaged boxed dry products, this is the place to go. They even have London's premier Jewish weekly, the Jewish Chronicle (or as it is called JC 😀) on Fridays. It is difficult to find these in other supermarkets in Ireland. 

Our initial reaction to the Irish is that they are very friendly and helpful people's, with a great sense of humour. I know it is hard to generalize based on a few hours experience, but that is our "first glance" feeling.

We picked up what we needed, and then headed over to the apartment. The Airbnb hosts had indicated that it would be cleaned and ready much earlier than the posted 3 PM checking time, and sure enough when we got there at 9:30 AM, it was ready.

Small, compact, clean and very well equipped with whatever we needed, it was a good find, not too far from the shul. We unpacked and Fran went to bed for a couple of hours.

We had prebooked to go on the "free" walking tour of Dublin, which was very highly rated in Trip Advisor, and rather than drive and attempt to find parking in very busy downtown Dublin, we took the bus, a short 17 minute drive to the centre of town. 

What immediately struck us was that this city with a listed metro population of just under 2,000,000 (city population of 530,000, urban population of 1.3 million, and metro population of 1.9 million), has virtually no high rise buildings. In the bus drive to the centre of the city, we did not spot anything over 4 storeys and this continued in the heart of the city. I do not think we have ever been in a downtown financial area of a large population city, where you do not see high rises or skyscrapers. Below is a typical shopping street in an area just north of the centre of Dublin.

 

It actually gives the city a very small town, intimate and old fashioned feel. That, accompanied by the emphasis on the variety of coloured storefronts, doors or rooftops, and the maintaining the old style signage on storefronts, gave Dublin a very friendly warm atmosphere.

We walked to the meeting place for the walking tour in front of the city hall.

 

There was a large crowd gathered and there were two separate tours, one for English speakers and one for Spanish speakers. We opted for the English tour🤓.

Our guide was Lisa, a smiling Irish redhead, with a wonderful sense of humour. Here is Lisa telling us a few words in Gaelic and then translating them into English.          https://youtu.be/E5gBjlmeHvU

Her use of the phrase "may the road rise to meet you" is from a traditional Irish blessing, which I found quite nice in its totality.

 

She began by teaching us a few words in Gaelic (very hard to pronounce) and by telling us that the name Dublin is derived from the old Irish "dubh" (black) and "linn" (pool) because of the black sludge that gathered in the centre of town where the River Poddle met the Liffey River, on the site of the Dublin Castle.

 

During our two hour walk, when the weather turned back and forth within minutes from rain to bright sunshine (which we would find was a regular occurrence during the first few days of our visit to Ireland), we visited the major sites in the city centre, and she explained to us the history of the city and of Ireland, covering the period from the earliest Viking settlement in 841 CE, through conquests by the Normans (hence the British rule), and the numerous rebellions and attempts at total independence, until it was totally realized in 1949 as the Republic of Ireland, with Dublin as its capital.

She also explained to us the financial ups and downs of the country and its capital, from the 7 year potato famine beginning in 1845 which resulted in the deaths and departure of 4 million Irish (50% of the population) to the boom times of entry into the European Union, when companies flocked to Ireland because of their low corporate tax rate, to the collapse in the recent 2008 recession, which has had lasting effects till today.

 

 

She was a great guide, peppering her talk with jokes, and a fiery Irish sense of pride and a spirit of never giving up.

Some of the places we visited were Dublin Castle; Chester Beatty Library and Museum; the outside of the Cathedral (where Lisa gave us an overview of the religious strife that has plagued the country); the Temple Bar district with its concentration of pubs, pedestrian streets, hotels and eateries; Trinity University (founded in 1592 with alumni like Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde); and finally the statue of Molly Malone, a fictitious character created by a song of the same name, which has been adopted as the official anthem of Dublin. 

A picture of one of the pedestrian streets in the heart of Temple Bar District in downtown Dublin with colourful flower adorned buildings and many, many pubs.

Here is the entrance to the quadrangle at the centre of Trinity University, home to 17,000 students.

 

And here is our fearless, funny tour leader Lisa, leading the entire group in a rousing rendition of Molly Malone:    https://youtu.be/9jYd9bJIBtU

After the tour, we returned to our apartment, delivered Shabbat gifts to our two hosts for Shabbat meals and returned to prepare for Shabbat. 

We walked to shul which took about 15 minutes. The shul is in a gated compound in the Terenure section of Dublin. 

 

On the walls of the lobby are pictures of all the former chief rabbis of Ireland, and it is here that I must correct an earlier post. Rabbi Isaac Herzog, zt"l, was never Chief Rabbi of the U.K., he went straight from being Irish Chief Rabbi to becoming the Chief Rabbi of Israel. There is no current Chief Rabbi; with the dwindling Jewish population in Ireland, the officiating body felt it could no longer afford the budget that such an office commands. 

There was quite a large crowd in shul. We were greeted by the President, Michael Stein, who told us that there would be a well attended Bar Mitzvah on Shabbat morning in shul, and that some of those attending on Friday night were guests, as well as a large number of tourists like us. We met Rabbi Zalman Lent at whose home we would be eating after davening.

After services led by the Chazzan Alwyn Shulman, a large crowd gathered in the lobby and they were sent to the homes of their hosts for the meal. Unlike most communities that we have visited recently, where there is a central Chabad house that hosts visitors for Shabbat meals, Dublin continues to do it the old fashioned way. There are a small number of Shomer Shabbat hosting homes who divide up the guests for Shabbat hospitality. There is a strong sense of community Hachnasat Orchim here and it gives guests a chance to meet "real" members of the community. And while the other hosts (4 or 5 homes) each took in 4 to 6 guests, we were with a large group (apparently the largest group ever) of about 25 guests that went next door to Rabbi Lent's home, and somehow we all fit into the Rabbi's living room/dining room. 

The Rebbetzin Rifkie, prepared everything herself and it was a wonderful, plentiful and delicious meal. There were a number of visitors from Israel (one couple with three daughters were friends of Chavi and Yisrael), from the USA, a number of students, a young couple originally from Boston and New York, now living in London, and a couple originally from Toronto currently making their home in Dublin. The conversation was lively, and people interacted throughout the meal. 

The Rabbi and Rebbetzin made everyone feel very much at home and what would have been an overwhelming experience for most, they took in stride with graciousness and a very welcoming atmosphere. The rabbi then went around the room and asked everyone to introduce themselves and say a bit about their backgrounds. When Fran mentioned her history as a Bergen Belsen baby, he asked her whether she would speak at Seudah Shlishit the following day.

It had been raining throughout the evening but b"h stopped long enough for our walk home. And after a very long night and day that had begun with our departure from Toronto, we had a well earned and very comfortable first night's sleep in Ireland.

We woke up Shabbat morning to a steady stream of driving rain. By the time we got to shul, even though we were wearing plastic raincoats, we were quite drenched. But despite the rain, the bar mitzvah celebration managed to bring a large number of local Jewish Dubliners out to shul; so many, apparently, so that when the Rabbi gave his sermon, he said, "since you are all here today, we might as well say Kol Nidrei and get it over with"! It was clear that this was not a normal crowd for Dublin on a typical Shabbat.

The president, in his announcement, urged everyone to attend Seudah Shlishit to hear the special speaker from Canada who would tell her story of being a Bergen Belsen baby.

I had asked the Rav if I could layn in an email some months back and so I am now able to add Ireland to the growing list of countries where I have had the privilege to layn. I think I am soon going to apply to Guiness for a World Record recognition. 

We ate lunch with Chazzan Alwyn and Nurit Shulman. The Shulmans, he from Capetown and she from Berlin, have made their home in Dublin for 25 years, and next Shabbat, when we will visit Dublin's shul for Shabbat, there will be a huge kiddush to celebrate this milestone. It was a lovely meal with nice zemirot and good conversation and there were two other guests, two young ladies from Jerusalem touring Ireland as well as the Shulman's son and daughter in law and grandchild visiting from Jerusalem. 

We made it back to the apartment by 5 PM, knowing that we had to be back in shul for mincha by 8:10 PM, so a very short Shabbat rest and we were on our way again.

Fran's talk at Seudat Shlishit was well attended by about 35 people, and it went very well. There was a lot of interest and a few people came specially to hear her. There were some questions and answers and for speaking with no chance of preparing, with no notes, it was an amazing job.

All in all, this was a very nice, tho wet, way to begin our Irish adventure. We got an early night's sleep, and planned to be on our way early Sunday morning as begin our way following a south east circle that would take us to Galway by the following Friday morning, with enough time to return to Dublin for Shabbat.

Next up, we go to visit the Irish National Stud and the town of Waterford.

All the best

Fran and David