Irish Questions and Jewish Questions: Crossovers in Culture

Clustered under the headings of Representations, Realities, and Migrations, this volume seeks to understand the shared history of the Jewish and Irish Questions (both in Europe and in Israel-Palestine and North America), the perceptions of Jews in Irish culture, and the ways in which Irish nationalists have used Jewishness as a means of understanding their own minority status. In addition, this volume adds to the critically understudied field of Irish-Jewish social history. Review This excellent volume succeeds in correcting long-held views about the unproblematic nature of Irish-Jewish relations. With its focus on attitudes toward and treatments of Jewish migrants and the Jewish minority’s hybrid identity the book’s significance surpasses its subject matters and contributes to current discourses on migration, intolerance toward immigrants, and integration. (Journal of British Studies) Ultimately by embracing the cumulative efforts of historians, literary critics, performance theorists, sociologists and demographers that Irish Questions and Jewish Questions makes its most significant contribution to the development of Irish historiography as it demonstrates the capacity of interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives to deepen our understanding of the complex evolution of Irish identity. (Irish Studies Review) Boldly revisionist―challenging and deconstructing the notion that Ireland was friendly to Jews, the authors offer a more nuanced and complex image of the ambiguous and often unsettling relationship between Irish and Jews. (Eugenio Biagini, coeditor of The Cambridge Social History of Ireland since 1740) The volume showcases what new methodological approaches can do: Hession and Wynn clearly shine, while Oakley Kessler’s essay reiterates the virtues and rewards of deep historical detective work and also shines a light on a key era in Irish economic development, where it intersects with the politics of rescue, prior to the Second World War. Gilman and Watt offer potential new avenues of exploration. (H-Judaic) Beatty’s and O’Brien’s comprehensive collection corrects and amplifies our understanding of the historically significant relationship between the Irish and Jews, one that has been largely governed by the linking analogy of the title, but, as these critics show, with insufficient nuance. These impressive essays represent in divergent ways what Stephen Watt describes in his contribution as the ‘multi-disciplinary bristle of a nascent Irish-Jewish studies.’ (Marilyn Reizbaum Bowdoin College)