A cemetery is a unique insight into the make-up of any local community. It is the record of the individuals and families, who lived, worked, married into and changed the community to which they belonged. But the burial ground of a largely immigrant community is even more significant in that it reveals those individual who often chose to stay and establish roots in a foreign land, and in doing so face the every day battles of prejudice, poverty or exclusion that so many Shepardic Jews faced. Each of the headstones we study today is the record of the life of an individual whose birth, experiences, works and losses make up the history of the Jewish community in Northern Ireland, which is part of the wider history of this country as a whole. Some were political leaders, some magnanimous philanthropists, some industrial giants and commercial geniuses. Others were craftsmen, factory workers, tailors, housewives and paupers. Some arrived rich, others made their considerable wealth in Belfast’s trade and commercial boom, but many others lived and died existing on the little they had. What fascinated me most whilst studying these headstones was the diversity of such a small community, numbering only 1500 at its height in the 1940s. Yet from this small Jewish community came MPs, a Lord Mayor, JPs, civic councillors, managing directors, rabbis, doctors, tailors, travellers, merchants and cat traders. The history from Jewish headstones is a window into a fascinating culture steeped in traditions carried across continents and generations and the history of a people adapting to a world undergoing technological and industrial revolutions, trade booms and depressions and the horrors of world war.

The Jewish community in Belfast differed immensely in size and sociology from its counterparts in Dublin and Great Britain. Whilst England can date Jewish residency to the early medieval period and Dublin to 1079, the earliest record of a Jewish resident in what is now Northern Ireland is the solitary figure of a tailor – Manuel Lightfoot – living in Belfast in 1652.1 There are virtually no records of any other Jews in Belfast until 1814. Almost all of the 282 Jews resident in the province by 1891 were Ashkenazi Jews from central or Eastern Europe. Ireland was to home to some Sephardim Jews who emigrated after the expulsion of Jews from Portugal in 1496, but very few ever took residence in the north of the island.

There was a distinct immigration of German Jews into Northern Ireland that predates the larger eastern European immigration by about 20-30 years. The onset of the American civil war cit off cotton supplies to textile merchants and for a time Ulster linen filled the gap. Indeed Belfast most famous Jewish family – the Jaffe – visited Belfast in 1845, just before the worst of the American cotton shortage was felt. Daniel Joseph Jaffe, a Hamburg merchant, came to Belfast with the intention of establishing contacts for the purchase of linen goods.2 By 1852 the family had moved to Belfast and opened a linen house in the city, shipping linen back to the family firms in Dundee, Paris, Hamburg, Leipzig, Russia and South America.3 Along with (amongst others) the Weinberg, Boas and Betzold families, the Jaffe family helped establish a wealthy and respectable base, which would financially support the Russian Jews who came to Northern Ireland, fleeing from Russia following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in March 1881. Some two million Russian Jews fled from the anti Semitic Russian regime which introduced the oppressive May Laws in 1882. Of the 150,000 eastern European Jews who arrived in Britain in less than 25 years, a few hundred made their way to the north of Ireland, mainly Belfast. Fifty-five Jews were resident in Belfast by 1871 and that this grew to 205 by 1891.4 It is worth remembering that by this stage 77 Jews also lived outside of Belfast. By the turn of the twentieth century approximately 700 Jews lived in Belfast and two synagogues had been established, one in Great Victoria Street, the other in Regency Street.

Yet the anti-German suspicion that accompanied the First World War cost Belfast some of its greatest commercial and entrepreneurial assets Most of the prominent German Jewish textile merchants left due to xenophobic hostility and an illogical undercurrent of suspicion of German-Jewish loyalty. Although small in number and present for just over half a century, the German Jews who came to Belfast from the 1850s to the 1870s were the foundation of a permanent Jewish community in Northern Ireland. As we study the Jaffes, Weiners and Betzolds we can see the figures that provided lay-leadership and tangible financial and charitable support to their eastern European co-religionists.

The number of Jews in Northern Ireland increased to approximately 1,400 after WW2.5 By studying the gravestones, wills and census records it is unmistakable that the vast majority of Jews in Northern Ireland were Ashkenazi immigrants. The headstones in both cemeteries testify that most were Russian and Polish, although some were from Austria and during World War II a significant number of Gibraltar Jews came to the province, and indeed ended their days here. Yet by the late 1880s and 1890s the majority of Northern Ireland’s Jewish community was made up of eastern European, Yiddish-speaking predominantly Orthodox immigrants. Many of these Jews worked in a concentrated number of trades, working as tailors, shoemakers and cabinetmakers. It is from this group that we will study some figures that represent microcosms of this working-class group.

The outbreak of world war in 1914 signalled the end of the great eastern European immigration. As mentioned a xenophobic suspicion filtered into the north of Ireland, which was somewhat illogical given the overrepresentation of Jews in the British armed forces (as the grave of soldiers in Carnmoney such as Louis Sergai reveals). This mistrust contrasted to the token of protection to refugees demonstrated in the Millisle farm, which gave sanctuary to a number of Jewish children.

By the end of our period the children and grandchildren of Jewish immigrants were members of a Jewish community that was fully integrated into society. The British state had by 1858 granted Jews equal constitutional status at law, and as a result Jewish citizens received the right to vote and hold office in Local Government and in Parliament. Through studying the headstones of Jewish men and women from a variety of backgrounds and classes we can see the diversity of this small community over a century of change and in doing so chart the changes and developments of society collectively and the Jewish community in particular.

In the mid-1860s the Belfast Corporation began to give serious consideration to acquiring a site for a new burial ground to accommodate the needs of a rapidly expanding industrial city. A site adjoining the Falls Road was acquired from Thomas Sinclair and on 1 August 1869 the new cemetery was opened. The small Jewish community in Belfast watched the unfolding events with some interest and came to the realisation that this was their opportunity to acquire a burial plot for their own people. Early in 1870 the first representations were made to the Corporation by the Belfast Jews.

The minutes of the Cemetery Committee of Belfast Corporation for 18 May 1870 include the following item: ‘Resolved that Mr Jaffe be informed his application for a portion of the cemetery to be allotted for the Jewish Community be considered at a special meeting of this committee on this day fortnight.’6 However, no record of this special meeting – if it ever did take place – has survived. The matter was again taken up in September of that year when at a special meeting on 8 September 1870 it was decided that the Mayor, the Chairman of the Cemetery Committee, and a Mr Gaffikin discuss the proposal for a Jewish plot at the City Cemetery with Martin Jaffe, Honorary Secretary of the Hebrew Congregation, the following morning.

At this meeting a solicitor explained to those present the conditions under which a portion of the cemetery might be set apart. To help clarify matters it was agreed that the solicitor should have a separate meeting with the leading members of the Jewish community. The discussions would appear to have been a success and soon afterwards Martin Jaffe wrote the following brief letter to the Cemetery Committee:

Dears Sirs, Having acquainted the principal resident Jews of the terms upon which you believe that the plot of ground asked for on the 16th May might be granted, it gives me much pleasure to state that my co-religionists are quite agreeable to accept thereof with the alterations suggested by you. The town council would confer a great boon upon our community by procuring for them at the earliest opportunity the ground sought for.

In response to this the Cemetery Committee ‘resolved that Mr Jaffe be requested on behalf of the Jewish persuasion to submit to this committee a drawing showing the nature of the enclosure which they propose to put round the ground to be allocated to their use.’ The drawing was submitted and approved by the Cemetery Committee on 16 January 1871. It was also agreed that the charge for each interment be £2. With an agreement having been reached between the Corporation and the Jewish community for a burial plot at the City Cemetery it merely required the approval of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for the proposal to be put into effect. This was forthcoming on 27 July 1871.

Soon afterwards a section of the City Cemetery was walled, and a small mortuary chapel in which to perform the Taharah7 and other ceremonies was built. Only the foundations of this building remain today. The names and addresses of those who purchased graves can still be accessed in the records at the City Cemetery office, and these are a useful indication of the geographical spread of many of the first Jewish immigrants. Burial within the Jewish community in Northern Ireland was regulated and overseen by the chevra kadisha (the burial society or Holy Brotherhood). The chevra kadisha at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth were independent of the Belfast Hebrew congregation, and they ensured that Jewish burials were conducted in keeping with often complex prescribed rules in the Torah and Talmud. In 1916 the chevra kadisha successfully negotiated with the Corporation for an extension to the Jewish plot at City Cemetery to allow for more burials.

The expansion of the Jewish population in Belfast by the early twentieth century created a need for a second cemetery. With a large proportion of the Jewish community living in the north of the city, consideration was given to acquiring a plot of land for a burial ground in this area. In 1909 an application for a cemetery in the Rural District of Carnmoney was made to Belfast Rural District Council. At a meeting to discuss this application, held on 8 September of that year, a letter of objection was read from the Reverend R. J. Clarke, rector of the parish of Carnmoney. Clarke argued that another cemetery in the area, which he described as ‘one of the prettiest suburbs of Belfast with sites most desirable for good houses’, was unwelcome. After deliberations the Council decided to raise no objections to this proposal.8

Soon afterwards a site in Carnmoney was purchased by Samuel Freeman and Maurice Goldring. Freeman was house furnisher in York Street, while Goldring was a financier in Donegall Street. The site was then placed in the hands of trustees nominated on behalf of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation. In addition to Freeman and Goldring, the trustees included Sir Otto Jaffe, Luis Berwitz, a house furnisher in York Street, and David Levinson of Clones, County Monaghan, a merchant.

The new cemetery extended to nearly four acres and was situated in Carnmoney townland, not far from Carnmoney Church of Ireland church. At this time the chevra kadisha and the Belfast Hebrew Congregation quarrelled over ownership of the cemetery (and other religious matters), but the dispute was eventually resolved through the arbitration of the Chief Rabbi in London. Now the community found itself with two cemeteries, with Carnmoney being the more convenient to a large proportion of Jews who had settled in north Belfast and offering more space. The Jewish cemetery at Carnmoney was first used c.1914. After this, the Jewish plot at the City Cemetery was used far less frequently. I date the last burial in the Jewish quarter of the City Cemetery to 12 October 1957 (the burial was of Joseph Myers aged 61, formerly of 49 Donegall Place and 21 Strangford Avenue Belfast). But by this time the cemetery had grown increasingly disused with the number of internments there dropping off very considerably by around 1920.

As almost all Jewish graves in Northern Ireland are contained within two cemeteries, it is highly probable that many people here have not seen a Jewish headstone. As is expected its purpose is in essence identical to the universal precept that the deceased should not be forgotten and that their burial place ought not to be desecrated. Unlike other interments the headstone is not always immediately erected, but in some Jewish communities the stone is veiled or delayed until the end of the 12-month mourning period. The actual gravestones in Northern Ireland, and indeed other English speaking countries, are generally inscribed with Hebrew on the top half of the stone and English on the lower section. In most cases the English section records the deceased’s name, date of death and memorial inscription (e.g. G.R.H.D.S.I.P etc). The Hebrew text is a little different. It usually records a prescribed set of information in a straightforward Hebrew text. The first line, (which resembles question marks) is the abbreviation Peh – Nun, which stands for either “poh nitman” or: poh nikbar” which means, “here lies”. The following line is the name of the deceased, in the form:

[Deceased’s name], son or daughter of [father’s name]

Son of is either ben ( Bet-Final Nun) or bar (Bet-Resh). Daughter of is bat (Bet-Tav). Often, one or both of the names is preceded by the letter Resh, which simply stands for “Reb” and means “Mr.” and is sometimes followed by a title indicating that the deceased was a kohein, a Levite or a rabbi. The third line indicates the date of death. This line begins with the abbreviation Nun-Peh followed by the date, the month and the year written in Hebrew numerals which are letters. The last line is an abbreviation that stands for “tehe nishmatah tzerurah bitzror hachayim” which translates “may her (or his) soul be bound in the bond of eternal life”.9 Almost all headstones show a Magen David and on the gravestones of those who were koheins (including most obviously the Cohens) we see the picture of hands in the position used when the kohanim bless the congregation at certain times of the year.

It is difficult not to devote a disproportionate amount of this study to one family in particular. The wealth of sources available to anyone researching the Jaffe family tree is remarkable. Perhaps the most famous, they were also the first German Jewish linen merchants to settle and trade in the city, and certainly the most successful. For anyone wishing to undertake even a little research into Belfast’s Jewish community, the Jaffe family is a good place to begin as it opens avenues into records of Jewish participation in trade, industry, commerce, politics, charity work, education, local government and the arts. Both Louis Hyman and Bernard Shillman give excellent accounts of the family’s beginnings in and departure from Ireland.10 The Jewish quarter of the City Cemetery is the final resting place of the founder and organizer of the city’s Jewish congregation – Daniel Joseph Jaffe. Born in Hamburg on 19 August 1809, Daniel Joseph owned a substantial mercantile business in Hamburg and in 1845 visited Belfast to open a linen house and shipped linen products back to his other firms in Europe and America.. Daniel Joseph’s son Martin held the first Jewish services in Northern Ireland in his Holywood home under the auspices of the British chief Rabbi, but it was his father who, on 7 July 1871, laid the foundation stone of the synagogue in Great Victoria Street, with a Hebrew congregation of no more than 55 people.

The commerce generated by the Jaffe family’s enterprise has yet to be calculated has yet to be calculated, but we an surmise that with Daniel Joseph leaving effects in the UK of alone of £140 000 in 1874 it was certainly a remarkable contribution to Belfast’s textile trade. Daniel Joseph Jaffe died in Niece on 21 January but was buried in Belfast thanks to his son Martin’s success in securing the plot of land in City Cemetery which was to become the Jewish Cemetery. Daniel Joseph is buried there with his wife Fredrike and other family members. However, the Jaffe history in what is now Northern Ireland is indeed a history without headstones. The exact site of Daniel Joseph’s grave is not apparent to anyone visiting the cemetery today because the English and Hebrew inscriptions along with the Magen Davids are chipped off. Whether vandalized, removed or buried for protection we are unsure because of poor record keeping.

The headstones of Herman and Deborah Fox in Carnmoney Cemetery provide a window into the intricate support network within the Jewish community, and the contribution of many Jewish families to charities in what is now Northern Ireland and in the UK. I hesitate to use the term “middle class” but it is important to differentiate these families from the wealthiest strata of German Jewish merchant families and the eastern European Jewish tradesmen who were usually significantly less well off.

The headstones read: “Deborah Fox, Founder and President of the Hebrew Benevolent Society” and “Herman Fox, Honorary President of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation and President of the Belfast Board of Guardians”. They died on the 22 September 1923 and 10 August 1932 respectively.

To anyone who has studied civil marriage records during the early to mid twentieth century the name Herman Fox will indeed be familiar; he was a witness to a multitude of Jewish wedding ceremonies. Along with his wife he helped to organize the Belfast Hebrew Benevolent Society and the Belfast Hebrew Board of Guardians. These organizations are incredibly elusive to those searching for any written record regarding their organisation. Yet amongst those members of the Jewish community who witnessed their work their legacy is resolute. Mr. Harold Ross and Dr Jonathan Lewis both testify that these societies were a response to the influx of poor eastern European Jews into Northern Ireland and Belfast in particular. The more established and wealthy German Jews organized a support network (independent of the state Poor Law Guardians), which provided interest free loans or small gifts to Jewish families to enable them to “find their feet” and establish small businesses in their trades. These charitable organisations were run by families from the Hebrew Congregation, and were busiest at times of cyclical unemployment or the arrival of a large number of poor immigrant families. Administration was minimal because of the natural interaction between the Jewish families that organized the collection and distribution of this aid. The response from the Jewish community to provide for families in need was usually immediate and achieved without the hard sales pitch that we associate with charitable organisations today.

We can see from the wills and testaments of Herman Fox, Albert Cohen, Sophia Cohen (both buried City Cemetery) and a multitude of others that these charitable organisations were supported by individual gifts bequeathed in wills or donated seasonally, like the Passover Relief Fund. Herman Fox’s will is a valuable resource which testifies to the philanthropic generosity of this man, and not only towards the Jewish community. Mr. Fox left gifts to the Royal Victoria Hospital and Mater Infirmorium Hospital. Indeed it is characteristic of the wills of Daniel Joseph Jaffe, Albert Cohen, Sophia Cohen, Harris Sergie and Samuel Freeman to bequeath generously to the local hospitals.

Herman Fox also left gifts to the Belfast Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society and the unusually named “Herman Fox Lodge Seal of David No. 95”. At first I was admittedly stumped as to what precisely this organisation was, but thanks to the help of Harold Ross I discovered this to be a Hebrew Friendly Society. Friendly Societies, for those unsure of their nineteenth century social and economic history, were originally mutual associations providing sickness benefits, life assurance and pensions on payment of weekly or monthly contributions. Herman Fox’s will reveals to us that his society was “for the relief of distress”; and like the Hebrew Belfast Board of Guardians helped to provide a support network within the Jewish community for its poorest members in their times of need. It is worth noting that it was not only working class Jews that contributed to Friendly societies. Herman Fox was, a considerably wealthy merchant, had policies with the Maccabean Friendly Society and the Bnei Brith Friendly Society – both Jewish varieties of these popular organisations. The Jewish support network is a fascinating insight into the self-help ethos that existed in Britain before the evolution and birth of the Welfare State after the Second World War. Before state provision of welfare low-income families had to rely on the inadequate and uneven provision of the Poor Law, supplemented with the support of their family and local church. In Jewish society the synagogue formed the pivot around which a multitude of family run support groups worked to keep the heads of immigrant Jews above water in times of crisis.

The role of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century women in organizing charitable work is well documented. Deborah Fox was a microcosm of the nationwide phenomenon of middle class women taking leading roles in charitable organisations and self help institutions. Yet the experience of Jewish women was by no means uniform. The 1901 and 1911 census records reveal that many Jewish women worked outside of the home. Hannah Vogoder (a Russian Jew) of No. 24 Fleetwood Street worked as a dressmaker, along with her four daughters who helped their father Mayer sustain his drapery business.13 Yet Teresa Weiner, whose headstone in Carnmoney dates her death as November 1946, enjoyed sufficient revenue even as a widow, to employ a Catholic domestic servant from Newry – Maggie Kinney.14 Indeed a substantial number of domestic servants were resident in Jewish households at the beginning of the twentieth century. Myer and Leopold Rosenfield, both of Cliftonpark Avenue and buried in Carnmoney, also employed domestic servants (one Roman Catholic and one Church of Ireland).

Sophia Cohen is a wonderful example of an independent Jewish lady of considerable means. Her headstone at City Cemetery is the record of a life filled with charitable interests. Sophia, who died in 1947, to the best of my knowledge did not marry. She bequeathed gifts to a remarkable array of institutions including; the Royal Victoria and Mater Hospitals, the Women’s and Children’s hospital Templemore Avenue, the Royal Maternity Hospital, the Cripples Institute Donegall Road (also her crutches not used since 1928), the Ladies Hebrew Benevolent Society, the Belfast Hebrew Benevolent Society, Dr Barnardo’s Home, the Salvation Army, the Cancer Hospital and Jewish Maternity Hospital London, and the Lord Mayor’s Coal Fund for the Deserving Poor, but to name a few.

Yet to some extent Sophia is unique, Many Jewish women lived what some might term unremarkable lives. The headstone of Caroline Boas (wife of the German Jewish merchant Herman) stands in City Cemetery. She was lived Windsor Park and died in 1916. Caroline provides an intricate picture of domestic Jewish life in Belfast after the trials of the First World War. Her home life was no doubt similar to many “middle class” Jewish homes in Northern Ireland throughout the first half of the last century, filled with the objects of suburban domesticity: family portraits, sterling silver teapots, a Sheffield candelabra and hand painted china.15 Her headstone reminds us of the prominent place given in Jewish practice to the home and the family. Collectively the lives of these women reveal that despite their common religious beliefs, the domestic and social experiences of Jewish women in Northern Ireland during this period was far from uniform.

In Carnmoney cemetery we find the gravestones of Samuel and Betsy Pinker, formerly of 61 Eglinton Street Belfast. Samuel was a tailor whose daughter Ettie married a tailor Henry Benjamin Rosenberg of 16 Old Park Road. Samuel Pinker’s headstone records his date of death in both the Jewish and Gregorian calendar dates: 12th Nissan 5696 and 4th April 1936. His will is short and simple. He leaves the whole of his personal estate to his wife. Most of his effects were derived from a life assurance policy with Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society. His gravestone is one amongst a multitude of stones which represent those families who from their arrival from the mid 1880s eked out a living from their trades. Isaac Patchunski, also buried in Carnmoney is recorded in the 1901 census for Alloa Street as a hardware traveller.16 He and his wife moved from Russia and for a time resided in Leeds, where their son Joseph was born, before they settled in Belfast to raise their five children who attended the Jaffe’s Jewish school. The lives of these families may appear unremarkable when compared to the likes of Otto Jaffe or Herman Fox. Yet their headstones are vital reminders of the presence of ordinary Jewish men and women in the heart of the working class districts of Belfast. It is important that in what is eventually becoming a multi-cultural and more diverse society that we do not forget just how peculiar and fascinating the presence of German, Russian and Polish Jewish families would have initially appeared to working class men and women who in all reality had little or no experience of other cultures or nationalities. The presence of the Jewish peddler, carpenter, draper, glazier, baker, tailor, traveller, jeweller, carpenter or even Rabbi17 must have had a remarkable effect on broadening the cultural horizons of Belfast’s indigenous residents. This subject of Jewish experience in Belfast’s Protestant and Catholic ghettos needs much more research, and quickly before the spoken recollections of a past generation are forgotten.

The Jewish section of Belfast’s City Cemetery contains the headstones of a remarkable cross-section of Jewish society. As we have seen Company Directors, housewives and tailors were all laid to rest there. Yet the record of just 104 names is misleading. The Jewish section of City Cemetery conceals a silent testimony to the central Jewish respect for life and man’s mortal equality. Recorded at the back of the City Cemetery record books are the lists of those buried in the Jewish and military graves, along with the names and addresses of the plots in the Jewish section. Yet behind these lists are two confusing column of figures which correspond to plot numbers and ages. This is the record of some two dozen (now unknown) Jewish persons who either could not afford a burial or had no family to arrange the ceremony. In essence, these were Ashkenazi Jewish paupers who, despite their poverty, were buried by the Chevra Kadisha in keeping with the directions given for burial in Eruvin 17. The story of Rabbi Schahter’s establishment of a collective gravestone to give a name and a place and a memorial to paupers is seldom told. There are certainly no indications of this act of remembrance in the cemetery today. The concept of this collective memorial is similar to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. The phrase, literally “a name and a place”, is indicative of precisely what a gravestone means in Jewish culture, and of the importance of not only remembering the dead, but of maintaining the record of their life and death.

There are two further areas of Jewish history in Northern Ireland which require much more intensive research, the current resources for which are admittedly quite sparse. These are the experiences of the community during the First and Second World Wars and the history of the Gibraltarian Jews in Northern Ireland. Carnmoney cemetery holds the headstones of Sergeant Pilot Albert Goldstone, “lost in Action, Hamburg 1942”, pilot Louis Sergai and the grave of Harris Sergai whose son Bennett Sergai was lost in action in the Great War (Harris’s will makes mention of monies made payable to him by the American Government for the loss of his son). These stones are in part testimony to Jewish loyalty towards the British war effort. We know that 50,000 Jews served in the British forces in WW1 and that of this 1596 were decorated.18 Also, because of the propensity for a large number of Jews to work in civilian occupations and trades, a large majority were conscripted into service in England were the proportion of Jews in the armed forces was higher than in the general population. However, the experience in Northern Ireland may have been different, given the absence of conscription and a vehement atmosphere of xenophobia in the First World War and the close proximity of a neutral Irish state which housed a larger neighbouring Jewish community in Dublin and Cork in the Second.

Carmoney graveyard also contains some unexpected headstones of Gibraltarian Jews, namely those of Isaac Rafael Attias, Joseph Benselum, Reuben Benggio and Leah Pariente. Jews had lived in Gibraltar in the fourteenth century. However, when the island passed to English control in 1713 the Jewish residents were expelled until 1749. At its height the Jewish community there numbered 2000 in the mid nineteenth century, a time when the colony’s strategic importance was most acute. During the Second World War the Jewish community was evacuated with the rest of the inhabitants to other British territories. A very small number made their way to Northern Ireland, with Joseph Benselum even residing in Saintfield! There has however been little research into the numbers of Gibraltarian Jews that came to Northern Ireland (gravestones are admittedly only an indication of those who stayed). Similarly there has been little study of the precise number of Jewish recruits from the province or of the reasons why the Northern Ireland government rejected the applications of asylum from around 244 Austrian Jewish families.19

This study of Jewish headstones is admittedly inadequate and touches merely the surface of a complex and rich cultural history. My hope is merely to highlight the need to record this history before it is forgotten. In studying these headstones I have found the factual realities of Belfast’s Jewish history very different from what I thought it would be. I have realized that it is an impossible and pointless exercise to study the Jewish community in isolation from its surroundings, or to mark clear-cut borders between secular and religious life. Judaism teaches that a single life is like a world, save a life and you save a world. Surely by the same reckoning, if we save the memory of a single life, we save the history of a world. Each Jewish headstone represents a family history, a community’s history, a nation’s history, and a Jewish history.

The opportunity to record the history of the Jewish community in Northern Ireland will disappear if we do not protect and preserve the headstones of the Jewish section of Belfast City Cemetery. If Belfast is to boast of inclusivity and tolerance this is the opportunity to prove in action what our public representatives claim in words. The invisibility of the Jewish community in the past is a testimony of the success of their integration into Northern Ireland’s society. But we ought not to reward peaceful integration by ignoring and forgetting the history of the Jewish people. Let us record fact, and write a history that gives to every person a name and a place.

1. Cecil Roth, Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 5; Harold Ross, History of the Jews in Ireland.
2. Ross, Jews in Ireland.
3. Louis Hyman, The Jews of Ireland: from Earliest Times to the Year 1910 (Irish University Press, Shannon, 1972), p. 208.
4. Dermot Keogh, Jews in Twentieth Century Ireland (Cork University Press, Cork, 1998), p. 8.
5. Ross, Jews in Ireland.
6. Minutes of the Cemetery Committee of the Belfast Corporation, 1867-87 (Public Record Office of Northern Ireland LA/7/11AB/2)
7. Taharah is the ritual cleansing of the body that is required by Halacha.
8. Belfast Rural District Council minutes (Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, LA/59/2F/6).
9. I Samuel 25 v 29.
10. Hyman, Jews of Ireland; Bernard Shillman, A Short History of the Jews in Ireland (Dublin, 1945).
11. Hyman, Jews of Ireland, p. 208.
12. Keogh, Jews in Twentieth Century Ireland, p. 69.
13. 1901 census for Fleetwood Street, Belfast (National Archives of Ireland A.92/58)
14. 1911 census for Clifton Park Avenue, Belfast (National Archives of Ireland A 95/41 & 42)
15. From the will of Caroline Boas (P.R.O.N.I. ibid)
16. National Archives of Ireland A/A92/3
17. Michael Leinkram aged 48, Rabbi, born Austria. (1901 census for Bristol Street, Belfast, National Archives of Ireland A93/8)
18. Cecil Roth, ibid, p 760
19. Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ulster (Belfast, 1992), pp 550-551.