I was delighted to have an article about Jewtown published in the Evening Echo a few weeks ago. Here is the article pasted from the original, which can be found here.
THE Albert Road area of Cork, known as Jewtown, is the subject matter of a new poetry collection by Simon Lewis, writes Colette Sheridan.
Thirty-seven-year-old Lewis, a winner of the Hennessy Prize for Emerging Poetry and a runner-up in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 2015, was looking for material for his debut collection.
Given his family’s background, focusing on Jewtown (the title of Lewis’s book) was an obvious choice and he will give a reading from it at the West Cork Literary Festival this month.
Lewis, who was brought up in Dublin in the liberal branch of Judaism, knew that his great- grandmother, Esther Cristal, was the daughter of some of the original Jewish immigrants from Lithuania who settled in Jewtown.
The story goes that the immigrants were thrown off a ship at Cobh by an unscrupulous ship’s captain who told them they had arrived in New York.
“It’s only in the last six or seven years that I’ve been researching Jewtown,” says Lewis, a Carlow-based Educate Together school principal.
“There isn’t a lot to go on. My research is on the years 1880 to 1912. I ended it before the war and before Irish independence.
“While some people were thinking on that level in those years, most people were just trying to get from one day to the next, having enough food on the table and getting the kids educated.
“I’m just trying to imagine people and their daily struggles. The book isn’t political. I wanted it to be more about human survival.”
Lewis examined census records from the period and “there were anecdotes from memoirs written by people whose parents would have lived in Jewtown”.
He adds: I also read Jewish genealogist, Stuart Rosenblatt’s volume on the history of Cork Jewry which I found in the National Library. I read newspaper articles and minutes from synagogue committee meetings.”
Lewis’s great grandmother was “a very minor playwright,” he adds.
“Her parents came from Lithuania to Cork. They were fleeing pogroms in Russia. The problem was that the Tsar of Russia decided that Jewish people were responsible for all the ills of what was going on at the time in the Russian empire. Rights were taken away from Jewish people.
“They were in a situation where they were going to be killed so they fled, like what’s happening in Syria today.”
While the Lithuanian Jews that settled in Cork ended up in the city by accident, according to lore, they paved the way for other family members to come here.
Lewis isn’t sure what his great-grandfather worked at but thinks he was a peddler, going from door to door. The couple had three children.
“Both my parents are Jewish. While I was raised in the liberal tradition, most Jewish people in Ireland would be Orthodox. I’m conscious of my identity. I went to a Jewish school in Rathgar.
“I guess, as a child, you’re going to believe what you grow up with. It would be impossible not to have some affection for your background. I’ve never eaten bacon even though I have absolutely no reason not to do so. It’s just tradition.”
Lewis was unable to find the house in Jewtown in which his forebears lived. “My parents are not that interested in genealogy so I guess that curtails me somewhat. But there’s people all over the place who seem to be related to me. You’re kind of piecing things together.
“The one thing I’m definite about is that my grandfather moved to Dublin when he was quite young so I assume Esther must have gone there too.”
Lewis’s poetry is concerned with issues such as how a person leaves their country, even if they don’t want to. “And how do you get somewhere with nothing? How do you maintain hope and how do you survive in a completely new situation where in effect, you’re an alien?
“I feel that all the poems mirror what is going on at the moment, such as in Syria or anywhere from which people have to flee and start again.
“The amazing thing is that they do, and not only do they survive, but many of them thrive. It’s an interesting concept to me. Sometimes, things do work out, whether by accident or through determination.”
Commenting on the state of the world and the fall-out from Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, Lewis is concerned about racist attacks.
“It would be foolish not to worry about the rise of the right again in America, Britain and parts of Europe,” he says. “In the 1930s, the common enemy was the Jews. And now it looks like we’re rounding on Muslims. I’d be worried that they’re going to become the scapegoats that Jewish people were.
“We’re going into that territory of ‘othering’ people, of dehumanising them. It’s very worrying. We need to cop on to ourselves and realise that we’re repeating history.”
Lewis says that at its peak, there were around 300 Jewish people in and around Jewtown in Cork, with some moving to the leafy suburbs.
“Initially, these people were poor but most of them would have enhanced their income status.
“Aspirations were high and there was respect for education to improve lives.”
Lewis’s poetry collection would be of interest to people who want to learn about Jewtown.
Lewis says: “What I’ve found is the fondness that Cork people have for Jewtown. Older people would have known Jews that lived there. Any time I give a reading, there are conversations (about Jewtown) after it.
“As to discrimination, maybe I’m being generous. I think at worst, people were apathetic. I don’t think it’s fair to apply our values to the values of previous times. People are more educated now.”
Simon Lewis will read from Jewtown at the West Cork Literary Festival on July 20.
“I feel that all the poems mirror what is going on at the moment, such as in Syria or anywhere from which people have to flee and start again.”