County Dublin
Baile Átha Cliath
- IrishBaile Átha Cliath
- ProvinceLeinster
- County townDublin
- Local governmentFour councils: Dublin City, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal and South Dublin
- Area926 km²
- Population1,458,154 (2022)
- Highest pointKippure, 757 m
Clontarf
O'Connell called a monster meeting for Clontarf on Sunday the eighth of October 1843. The place was chosen for its meaning. Brian Boru had won there.
On the Saturday the government proclaimed it. O'Connell called it off the same day rather than risk a massacre.
It was consistent with everything he had argued. It also finished him. He was convicted of conspiracy and taken to prison in 1844, and the House of Lords set him free that September.
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Crane Lane and Ballybough
A permanent Jewish community came to Dublin shortly after the Restoration in 1660. Its first synagogue was in Crane Lane, near the Castle.
In 1728 the community bought ground at Ballybough, on the north side, for a cemetery of its own. It is the oldest Jewish cemetery in Ireland.
Little is known of the community's first hundred years. Part of the reason is that the headstones were stolen for building.
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Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog
He arrived in Belfast in 1915 and did an unusual thing for a new arrival: he learned the language of the country. Isaac Herzog spoke Irish, sided with the national movement, and was called the Sinn Féin Rabbi.
He was a towering intellectual and linguist. He became chief rabbi of Dublin's community in 1919, and when the Free State came he was its first Chief Rabbi.
His friendship with Éamon de Valera was close. De Valera consulted him on the new constitution in 1936.
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Michael Noyk
Michael Noyk was a Dublin solicitor. Arthur Griffith was among his clients.
Through the War of Independence, Noyk worked in secret as the principal acquisition agent for the Dáil and the IRA. He bought and rented safehouses under false names, and into them went documents that could not be lost and republican gold that could not be seen.
The rest of his work was done in the open, before hostile military tribunals in Dublin's City Hall. He defended Cumann na mBan members, men accused of illegal drilling, and suspects charged over Bloody Sunday.
Once he went further still. He prepared to carry a firearm into Dublin Castle, to help the captured Seán MacEoin escape.
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Robert Briscoe
His father was a pacifist. Robert Briscoe was not. He joined the republican movement against the old man's wishes and smuggled arms, large shipments out of Europe, moving under the name Captain Swift. When the Treaty split the country, he took the anti Treaty side.
Politics followed the gun. In 1927 he won a seat for Fianna Fáil and held it for thirty eight years, until 1965. Then, in 1956, came the distinction that carried his name past Ireland: first Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin, feted on a goodwill tour of America.
His son Ben Briscoe wore the mayoral chain too, in 1988.
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Read further
Little Jerusalem in Portobello, a Chief Rabbi who spoke Irish, and the Clontarf meeting the government banned in October 1843.