Next year will see the centenary of Bloomsday, the 100th anniversary of the day named as such by James Joyce as a gift to Nora Barnacle in celebration of their first date. That this day, June 16th, has taken a place in posterity is due of course to Joyce's genius as a writer. He created, in addition, the Irish Jew Leopold Bloom, a prototypical wanderer and anti-hero who has become so real that The day named after him is celebrated throughout the world.
Bloom's search for an identity perhaps reflects the quandary of all Irish Jews. Just as a Jew born in Northern Ireland may be asked, "Are you a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?", the Jew from the Republic struggles in his own unique diaspora. In his recently published book Somewhere To Hang My Hat, Stanley Price elaborates on the theme first explored in a TV documentary that he wrote and presented on RTÉ and Channel 4 four years ago.
Price had four Russian grandparents who left Lithuania at the time of the pogroms of the late 1880s. One landed in Cork, three in Dublin. His parents were born and brought up in Dublin before going to live and work in London, where Stanley was born. He went to school in Dublin and spent most of his early life yo-yoing back and forth across the Irish sea. Later he became a journalist and full-time writer.
Double diaspora
In 1998 he set out to discover how his paternal grandfather arrived in Cork and was given the name Charles Beresford Price. In the London of his youth Price found himself part of a double diaspora, Irish and Jewish. His father, like many of his contemporaries, had to emigrate to find work in the medical profession.
Young Stanley enjoyed visiting his grandparents who were still resident in Dublin: the wealthy Whites on his mother's side and the less-well-off Prices. The Whites lived in Kenilworth Square in the then posh Rathgar area, and the Prices still lived on the South Circular Road in the centre of Dublin's "Little Jerusalem".
One summer, when he was 10, Stanley spent his holidays with his grandparents in Sandycove in a house overlooking the Forty Foot. When the vacation ended and he should have returned to London, he refused to do so. His revolt took the form of a sit-in the bathroom with books for company. He locked the door and refused to come out until it was agreed that he could stay on in Ireland. His parents capitulated and he was allowed to remain in Dublin, where he attended Wesley College and developed a passion for rugby.
Unfinished business
Price eventually returned to Britain where he became a journalist, novelist, playwright and screenwriter. But he could never forget the adopted home of his youth. He lived for a time in America, married and returned to England. But it seems that there was always unfinished business: he had not found the place where he could hang his hat and call "home".
His book is a chronicle of the journey back to find the missing pieces of the jigsaw of his Russian/Irish forebears. In the course of his explorations he tries to discover how his Lithuanian grandfather got the unlikely middle name "Beresford".
Price's journey of detection leads us through a near-contemporary history of Ireland's Jewish community. We learn of the domestic history of Jewish Dublin and, through Price's eyes, himself an outsider, we can see how the small Irish Jewish community has shrunk by 80 per cent in 50 years.
The fear of assimilation into a predominantly Christian society is one that has bedevilled Jewish communities throughout the world. Price's own love for a Christian woman led to a crisis in his life and he recounts the painful differences that grew between his father and himself. When he married the love of his life he lost contact with his parents for several years. Many will identify with the pain caused by such problems and the difficulties of an inter-faith marriage.
Price also gives us some fascinating insights into Jewish religious practice. After his father's death, and out of respect to his beliefs, he did attend synagogue each day to recite the "kaddish" prayer. He recounts a hilarious story of an informal sermon, after a mid-week morning service, given by a rabbi regarding how we should treat flatulence when at prayer.
Fiery sermons
The rabbi in question, Isaac Bernstein, was himself a Dublin man born in Kenilworth Road, who made a distinguished career for himself both in the US and Britain. He earned the nickname "Blazes" Bernstein for his fiery sermons, which I can remember being greeted with less than enthusiasm by the congregation when he preached in Terenure synagogue. I grew up with Isaac and, knowing his keen sense of humour, am sure that he chose the subject for rabbinical exegesis with mischief in mind.
Price's stance, that of an inside-outsider gives us, in addition to his personal story, an intriguing glimpse into a community unique in world Jewry. He too is fascinated by Leopold Bloom and speculates as to the possible models for the character. His conclusions on this are informative, practical and realistic.
Somewhere to Hang My Hat, by Stanley Price, is published by New Island Books at €12.99