County Dublin
Baile Átha Cliath
- IrishBaile Átha Cliath
- ProvinceLeinster
- Local authoritiesFour
- AreaAbout 922 km²
- Population1,458,154 (2022)
- Founded841, as a Norse longphort
No history for County Dublin yet.
No places for County Dublin yet.
Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog
He arrived in Belfast in 1916 and did an unusual thing for a new arrival: he learned the language of the country, and used it. Isaac Herzog gave nationalist speeches in Irish fluent enough to earn him a nickname, the Sinn Féin Rabbi.
He was a towering intellectual and linguist, and in 1926 his authority grew to cover the whole of the Irish Free State as Chief Rabbi. He defended the customs of his community without apology: ritual slaughter kept lawful, the Zion Schools founded, classes on the Sabbath resisted.
His friendship with Éamon de Valera was close, and it mattered. It helped secure, in the 1937 Constitution, explicit recognition of Ireland's Jewish congregations.
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Michael Noyk
Michael Collins trusted few men without reservation. Michael Noyk, a Dublin solicitor, was one of them.
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 forty years. 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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