So we bundled up with our ponchos and rain pants and made our way to shul. This week there were fewer people in shul. The tourist season ends with the beginning of school in September and so there were only a few tourists attending shul that morning.
As had happened on all three shabbatot in Dublin, the rabbi wished a Bon Voyage to another couple who were leaving Dublin for England to enjoy their retirement closer to their children. From our discussions with many people here, this is a common occurrence. This time the man who was leaving is the official archivist for the Irish Jewish community. He is the head of the Irish Genealogical Society and has amassed over 50000 names of current and former Irish Jews, which is now available on line and in a number of printed volumes at the Irish Jewish Museum. He, like the others before him, will be missed by this dwindling community.
We ate again at Chazzan Alwyn and Nurit Shulman's home and as previously, there was a full table of guests, two young ladies from Karnei Shomron touring Ireland, another who had just moved to Dublin to work at one of the hi tech places, a couple from Jerusalem and us. Once again, a delicious meal and great conversation.
We walked home in sunshine (!) and had a short 90 minute rest before walking back to shul for mincha and Seudah Shlishit (which we sponsored in gratitude to the shul for its hospitality).
Sunday morning, we packed up and drove north (in a mixture of cloud and sunshine) to Northern Ireland, to the extreme northern coast of this small country. Northern Ireland is unique as compared to the Republic of Ireland, in that they have a different currency (the pound, equivalent to the British pound), different manner of measuring speed (miles instead of km.), and your Simcard that you installed in the Republic, no longer works in Northern Ireland. It is essentially a separate country with no clearly marked or official border crossing.
Our destination was one of the most visited sites in Northern Ireland, the Giant's Causeway, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Giant's Causeway is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the foot of the cliff and disappear under the sea, hence the name "Causeway". Most of the columns are hexagonal, although there are also some with four, five, seven or eight sides.
Here is how Wikipedia describes this phenomenon: The tallest are about 12 metres (39 ft) high, and the solidified lava in the cliffs is 28 metres (92 ft) thick in places. The area where the Causeway is located, Antrim, was subject to intense volcanic activity, when highly fluid molten basalt intruded through chalk beds to form an extensive lava plateau. As the lava cooled, contraction occurred and fractured in a similar way to drying mud, with the cracks propagating down as the mass cooled, leaving pillarlike structures, which are also fractured horizontally into "biscuits". In many cases the horizontal fracture has resulted in a bottom face that is convex while the upper face of the lower segment is concave, producing what are called "ball and socket" joints. The size of the columns is primarily determined by the speed at which lava from a volcanic eruption cools. The extensive fracture network produced the distinctive columns seen today. Here is a brief video:
You arrive at a visitor centre and then make your way down an easily walked paved path to the bottom of the cliff and the seashore. It is at this point that you can see this wonder of nature. Huge columns that look like they were formed by pouring concrete into moulds and nested together like paving stones. Amazing! Well worth the three hour drive this far to see this amazing site.
It would have been much nicer if it was sunny with blue skies, but this is Ireland.
There is a minibus that will take you back and forth from the visitor centre and we opted to walk down and take the minibus back up the hill.
From here we drove a short distance to the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, a famous rope bridge that links the mainland to the tiny island of Carrickarede. It spans 20 metres and is 30 metres above the ocean and rocks below. Traditionally, fishermen erected the bridge every year to be able to get down to the ocean to check their salmon nets.
Today it is owned by the National Trust and is a popular tourist attraction. It is advertised as an "exhilarating rope bridge experience and challenge"....not sure I would drive all this way to see it but if you are next door at the Giant's Causeway anyway, it is worth a stop. We thought that the Capilano bridge in Vancouver was much nicer.
The waterway in front of you at this point is one of the narrowest between Ireland and Scotland, and today, on a fairly clear day, Scotland was easily visible.
From here, we drove for 90 minutes to our lodging for the next two nights in Belfast. Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, is a very small city of about 300,000 people in the city proper and about half a million in the metropolitan area. It is well known as the birthplace of the Titanic; built in the shipyards of Harland & Wolff.
We had rented a very nice apartment right next door to the new Titanic exhibit, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the north of Ireland.
On Monday morning we had made an appointment to visit the shul and the Rabbi in Belfast.
A little history first....
During the 1860s and 1870s the first Jews arrived in Belfast because of the linen industry. A small number of German Jewish merchants arrived in Ulster and exported Irish linen across Europe and to North America and beyond.
The first synagogue was built in 1871 on Great Victoria Street. The community's founder, Daniel Joseph Jaffe, is commemorated by the ornate drinking fountain which is located today at an entrance to the Victoria shopping centre in Belfast and his son, Sir Otto Jaffe, was twice Lord Mayor of the city.
In the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, the number of Jews in what is today Northern Ireland increased to nearly a thousand with the arrival of refugees from Eastern Europe, who were fleeing poverty and persecution. Most of this second wave of Jewish immigration came from Lithuania but there was also a minority of Polish Jews.
During the Second World War the community, took in refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe; a hostel was opened on Cliftonpark Avenue and in 1939, a refugee farm was established at Millisle County Down which was run along the lines of an Israeli kibbutz to house kindertransport children who were permitted entry into the UK on the eve of the war, but without their families.
One interesting item of trivia is that in 1918, Belfast boasted a future Israeli chief rabbi (Rabbi Dr. Isaac Halevi Herzog), a future Israeli president (Rabbi Herzog's son, Chaim) and a future Israeli foreign minister (Abba Eban, who was a WWI child evacuee to Belfast).
At its height, the Jewish population of Northern Ireland (mainly Belfast) was about 1500. As a result, when the current synagogue on Somerton Road was built, it had enough seats to accommodate 1200 people. Today, as a result of the mass emigration during the Troubles between Protestants and Catholics, there are less than 100 individuals in Northern Ireland who identify as Jews.
When we met the current rabbi, David Singer, we spent a few moments playing Jewish geography until we discovered that he is related to my first cousin Rabbi Aaron Levine. Rabbi Singer was born in Birmingham England and his wife is from London. They have ten children and have lived for most of the last 40 years in Israel where he served in the IDF, was a medic and was one of the founders of the Israeli branch of Hatzoloh. He is also a schochet, a mohel and a sofer. Assuming the position as spiritual heads of the Belfast community at this stage in their lives was a challenge that he and his Rebbetzin wanted to tackle with the very positive and ambitious goal of not just maintaining the services to the community but expanding and widening them.
He pointed out that given the 30 or so people who attend Shabbat morning services, Belfast likely has the highest per capita synagogue attendance of any city in the world!😀
We enjoyed our visit and were very impressed with his energy and dynamism. We wish him and his Rebbetzin much success in this very noble and ambitious venture.
We then walked from our apartment to the downtown centre core of the city, to do some souvenir shopping. The city was definitely alive with many shoppers and tourists.
Next was the Titanic exhibit which is housed in a brand new 6 storey facility in the port area right next to where the actual ship was built. It is a self guided interactive tour which we thoroughly enjoyed. Parts of the ship have been restored so that you get a real feel for the way it must have been departing on the maiden voyage.
The Yiddish caption on the book cover in the Titanic exhibit says: The Titanic: The Wet Grave
Of all that we saw in Northern Ireland, the Giants Causeway and the Titanic are reasons why one should make the effort to visit this part of the island.
On Tuesday morning we drove the 90 minutes back to Dublin and this time we were staying close to the port of the city, which is accessible by highway thru a new tunnel that literally cuts 6 Kms. under the centre of the city and has eased traffic in the core of the city.
From our apartment, it was a short three stop train ride to the heart of the city.
We next visited the Irish Jewish Museum in Dublin, which is housed in one of the old shuls close to downtown which was where much of the Jewish community lived in the mid 1900s. It was a small museum but packed with information, old pictures, memorabilia, religious artifacts and records. For a small community, we were impressed with the vast amount of items on display and with the dedication that the community has in preserving its past. Here is a very interesting 1949 letter from the Shechita Board.
We dropped into the nearby Bretzel Bakery, which at one time was Jewish owned and totally kosher. Under its current non Jewish owners, there is still hashgacha on all the breads but not on the pastries and cakes. We wanted to try an Irish soda bread and that is what we took home for dinner.
In the evening we roamed around the downtown of Dublin and went to see a Woody Allen movie, Cafe Society, which we would recommend. Typical Woody Allen fare.
The next morning we drove 40 minutes to the Powerscourt Gardens. It was on everyone's list of must dos while in the Dublin area. We can attest to the fact that the gardens were nice, but I would only do this if I had little else to do. Clearly we have seen much nicer gardens In our travels.
In the evening we visited a pub in the popular Temple Bar district and enjoyed a shandy (beer and lemonade) while listening to Irish music and watching some Irish dancing. It was a fitting end to a very enjoyable trip to Ireland and Iceland and we would highly recommend that you put both these places on your "bucket list".
In tribute to the wonderful Irish sense of humour that we experienced almost every time we struck up a conversation with a local Irishman, we will end with a couple of popular Irish jokes and sayings.
*************
McQuillan walked into a bar and ordered martini after martini, each time removing the olives and placing them in a jar. When the jar was filled with olives and all the drinks consumed, he started to leave.
'S'cuse me,' said a customer, who was puzzled over what McQuillan had done. 'What was that all about?'
'Nothing,' he replied, 'my wife just sent me out for a jar of olives.'
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Hills as green as emeralds
Cover the countryside
Lakes as blue as sapphires-
And Ireland's special pride
And rivers that shine like silver
Make Ireland look so fair-
But the friendliness of her people
Is the richest treasure there.
*************
Whenever there is happiness
Hope you'll be there too,
Wherever there are friendly smiles
Hope they'll smile on you,
Whenever there is sunshine,
Hope it shines especially
To make each day for you
As bright as it can be.
**************
Looking forward to sharing our travels with you in the future,
All the best
Fran and David
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