Excerpt from session transcript
Question: Could you tell me if your parents experienced any antisemitism in Dublin when they were growing up?
Stanley Price: Very, very little that they told me about. I don’t think that they did. The only thing that they said which has stuck in the back of my mind is that they were respected for keeping their religion, because the Irish Catholics are a religious people so they somehow respected other people observing their own religion. I think that obviously there was antisemitism. There was a supposed pogrom in Limerick in 1904, which by today’s standards wasn’t a pogrom. I think the Irish were used to persecution and they were religious and I think they saw a lot in common with the Jews, and I think the Jews adapted very nicely. There was some of that old Catholic and Christian antisemitism. You know, “You crucified our Lord!” That’s what a lot of it was about.
Maureen Lipman: I think it was only 1950 when the verb ‘to jew’ was taken out of the dictionary. When doing research into Joyce Grenfell I found there was quite a surprising number of what we would now call ‘politically incorrect’ statements. You know: “Myra Hess played the piano today. She’s such a nice woman you’d hardly know she was a Jewess.” And that’s from Joyce. The other Joyce!
Stanley Price: The other thing which people have said to me is: “Isn’t it sort of antisemitic that the Irish always say ‘Jew man’. That ‘Jew man’ over there.” But I went into that and actually it isn’t antisemitic because the reason they say it is that it is a literal translation of something. If you’re in Ireland and you want to find a toilet, it’s all up in Gaelic. The men’s is ‘Fir’ and the women’s one is ‘Mairfidh’ [?]. And f-i-r just means ‘man’. So when you refer to a foreigner, they would say ‘French man’, ‘Russian man’. So ‘Jew man’ is ‘… fir’. So it is not a particularly anti-Semitic thing.
Question: “What was the relation between Rabbi Herzog and de Valera, and the relation of Ireland and Israel with Herzog in Israel?”
Stanley Price: Well, I mean the relation was very, very good because Isaac Herzog had been the Chief Rabbi of Ireland and went off and his son became President, as you know. So I think there was a certain cry on the part of the Irish … de Valera … these Jewish families who went off. Also, I remember my own book. There was a wonderful character called Mayor Robert Briscoe who was Mayor of Dublin from 1956-7 [and 1961-2] and he had fought with the IRA. He’d fought besides de Valera in the war and had become a member of the Dail and his son was also Mayor of Dublin. Certain characters like that in Irish-Jewish history, all these created a sort of terribly good image of what a Jew was like in Ireland and I think that helped relationships a great deal.
Comment: Just an aside about antisemitism. I’m an Irish Jew and the neighbours were all Catholics and very often my best friend from next door, Carmel Burns, would bring me out to all her friends and she would say, “Henni is a Jew” and they would look at me and they’d say, “Our Lord was a Jew”. So we had no antisemitism in our street.
Stanley Price: I was hoping someone was going to ask that one. I must ask myself a question so I can tell you a story! This is since the book was finished and published. Probably some of you saw last month a wonderful character, Gerald Goldberg, who was the Lord Mayor of Cork, died about a month ago in Cork. He was 93. A wonderful man who I met doing research for the book. At his funeral cortege last month in Cork, as the hearse drove past the town hall, standing on the steps of the town hall was the present Lord Mayor of Cork, three past Lord Mayors of Cork and Mary McAleese, the President of Ireland. So there was tremendous honour. He was buried in Cork cemetery.
When I had talked to him about why was it that most of the Jews of Ireland came from this teeny little group of villages in Lithuania. I suppose they came because a few went and then wrote home and said “You must come. It’s very nice here.”
But I said to him, “Where did your family come from?”
And he said, “Oh, we all came from Yakniam [?],” and I began to laugh. I couldn’t help myself.
And he said, “Why are you laughing?”
I said, “You mean Yakniam in Krissie [?]?”
And he said, “Yes,” he said, “it’s just up the road. How did you know about that?”
And I said, “Because in my family my grandmother, when she wanted to dismiss anyone, it’s like ‘from the back of beyond’, she’d go, “Ach, they come from Yakniam in Krissie!” So I told him this.
He said, “I see.” He wasn’t very amused. He said, “I see. Where did your grandmother come from?”
And I said, “Schmergon. [?]”
“Hmm. Schmergon. How central was that?”
Stanley Price: The fear of the unknown?
Maureen Lipman: It’s another word … ignorance!
Stanley Price: Yes, I think that’s it! I mean, I’m a bit edgy about anti-Semitism because people who are antisemitic, you have to think about this in a wider context. I mean, it’s racist. If you scratched an antisemite, you’d find he isn’t just against Jews. They are against blacks. They are against gays. It’s a type of person who is antisemitic, on the whole. Racism is a virus. I mean that the antisemitism is a virus in my view. It’s been going on for longer than 2000 years and we won’t eradicate it just like that. There are now so many other people in this country you can hate. So I mean it’s got full spread and I feel much comfier with that. Don’t you?
Maureen Lipman: If I don’t feel comfortable, no.
Stanley Price: All right. Well don’t feel uncomfortable.
Question: I grew up in Belfast and there was a family across the road from me and they had two daughters but no sons. And I had to be with them every Christmas because they said that although they had two daughters, I was their wee son and I had to be with them for their holiday. And somehow that’s remained in my mind and it’s reminded me that, as I say, I never came across any antisemitism, and I’ve lived in Ireland for twenty years. So I think that’s a good record for them.
Maureen Lipman: It’s different now, though, isn’t it really? I don’t recall any antisemitism growing up in the North of England. I mean, we were the good guys. We had fifty years of being the good guys.”
[End]
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