Manus O'Riordan continues his reflections on some aspects of Irish Jewish history in the age of Joyce

Edelstein was a man with a serious drink problem, and was subject to frequent psychiatric breakdowns, with resulting periods of hospitalisation. In fact, one such commitment to the Richmond mental hospital for a whole nine months stretch stemmed from the scandal of his 1911conviction for the crime of indecent assault. If his was a troubled personality, he could also be a troublesome individual on many a political front. His own Nationalist rebellion against the Jewish establishment, which had entered the 20th century with a mainly Unionist outlook, resulted in a wholesale commitment to the Home Rule Party that was so intense that ‘dirty tricks’ were deemed to be quite in order against any of that Party’s opponents. Edelstein lived on New Street, the central venue for James Connolly’s outdoor public meetings during his 1902 Wood Quay election campaign, and a straight continuation of Clanbrassil Street, the principal thoroughfare of Dublin’s “Little Jerusalem”. There can be little doubt that it was Edelstein himself who was to be the target of Connolly’s charge that his Home Rule opponents were telling Jewish voters that he was an anti-Semite while, at the same, time others in that Party were spinning a yarn to Christian voters that Connolly was a Jew! (51).

Yet Edelstein himself would also become a target of Loyalist slander. In 1913 he had already earned such hostility for being a militantly vocal opponent of Protestant missionary campaigns to “convert” Dublin’s Jews. And in 1916 the Unionist Dublin Evening Mail fingered him with the suspicion that he had been responsible for the arrest of the Loyalist editor and propagandist Thomas Dickson, who was to be among the murder victims [the most prominent being Francis Sheehy Skeffington] of the frenzied British army Captain Bowen-Colthurst. The Irish Times ensured that such mud would stick when, in its 1916 Rebellion Handbook, it quoted Tim Healy, counsel for the Dickson family, as charging that “I want to show that Dickson was arrested on the information of this man Edelstein”. The Irish Times, however, completely omitted to report the final incident at that inquiry, when Healy threw down the instructions of the Dickson family solicitors, declared them to be absolutely and entirely wrong in respect of Edelstein, and apologised to the latter, by repeatedly exclaiming: “I am sorry, extremely sorry!” And of course, it was left to Edelstein himself in 1933 to publish, at his own expense, that same vindication. (52).

Within the confines of Jewish community itself there was to be found more open expression of a positive view concerning the role that had been played by Edelstein’s novel The Moneylender. Moreover, notwithstanding what would now be regarded as an undoubtedly anti-Semitic cover, it is today on public display in the Irish Jewish Museum. In a 1979 community magazine, Hilda Harris (a sister of the previously mentioned Danker brothers), of St. Kevin’s Road, was to award Edelstein the following accolade:

“This man, our Jewish James Joyce, wrote a book called The Moneylender, 1931, 5th edition … I believe it caused quite a stir then and was received with very mixed feelings among our community. The author confidently commended his work to the impartial judgement of the public, his object being rather to expose the causes of usury for eradication than the effects for vituperation. A man very much before his time … This book is in my possession and in no way will I sell it. It is a little treasure I am proud to possess, so no offers please.” (53).

The inscription on his tombstone in the Dublin Jewish community’s Dolphin’s Barn cemetery simply states: “Joseph Edelstein. D. 1st December 1939. Many Were His Good Deeds”. (54).

Ó Gráda dedicates his book to both Nick Harris and the Irish Jewish Museum’s first archivist Asher Benson, who died just as it was brought to completion. And it is in line with the roles of both Harris and Benson as “disturbers of the peace” in respect of any too comfortable an approach to Irish Jewish history that Ó Gráda is now the first historian to give Edelstein his due:

“Joseph Edelstein’s controversial and scurrilous The Moneylender… offers an insider’s very unflattering portrait of the fictional immigrant packman, Moses Levenstein, and his circle. Moses and his greedy friends prey on impoverished and gullible clients. There is no love lost on either side … Edelstein, at this time a Home Ruler, believed that the moneylenders poisoned relations between the immigrants and the host community … Edelstein’s aim was to integrate the Jewish community and protect it from the hostility and suspicion facing moneylenders. However, in the attempt he painted an unduly dark portrait of his compatriot moneylenders. The rates they charged, though high, were certainly no higher than those charged by non-Jewish moneylenders before their arrival, and probably not much higher than those by pawnbrokers, another major source of credit for Ireland’s poor.” (55).

Ó Gráda speculates that this 1931edition had been published as a campaign boost for Briscoe’s Moneylenders Bill, and there is further speculation that Edelstein also sometimes acted as a speechwriter for Briscoe. With the final enactment of the Moneylenders’ Act of 1933, the ultimate objective of the book can indeed be said to have been realised. Any further publication of Edelstein’s book, carrying that self-same racially stereotyped cover, would indeed have moved into the realm of the unconscionable in the immediate aftermath of Hitler’s assumption of power in Germany that same year. It would certainly have played into the hands of the Nazi sympathiser Charles Bewley, Irish Minister to Germany during that period. The publication of Volume V of Documents on Irish Foreign Policy now gives us the opportunity to read in full Bewley’s report of 9 December 1938 concerning those all too real pogroms, accompanied by murder, that characterised Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht: “I am not aware of any such [cases of deliberate cruelty] towards Jews on the part of the German Government.” Yes, that is precisely how Bewley put it! (56).

It is, however, unfortunate that this latest Volume was subject to an ill-informed review by Emeritus Professor John A. Murphy, who sought to link the name of Bewley to those of Leopold Kerney, Irish Minister to Spain, and Frank Ryan, veteran of the Spanish Anti-Fascist War, in an attempt to damn the latter two with some guilt by association with the former. Any researcher with a modicum of rigour would have taken note of the clear evidence that Kerney’s behaviour was the exact opposite of Bewley’s, and of the fact that Ryan was reporting from Berlin to Kerney in Madrid on how he had been successfully undermining Bewley’s machinations during the War years that followed. (57).

Up to his dismissal from his post by de Valera on 1 August 1939, Bewley had played a particularly malicious role in Berlin, his anti-Semitic prejudices seeking to obstruct any and every genuine refugee application. Particularly heart-rending is the following account by Bob Briscoe’s son Joe:

“All of a sudden you realise that 156 of your uncles, aunts, cousins were all shunted off in cattle carts to their death. But worse was to come. On a visit to Tel Aviv, by chance I met a first cousin of my father’s named Tamara Schwalb. Her mother was my father’s aunt. After tea and coffee she turned to me and said: ‘Joe, I want to ask you a very difficult question. Why didn’t your father save my mother’s life?”’

Having had no idea what she was talking about, Joe Briscoe learned from his cousin that her mother - and his own father’s aunt - had written to the TD begging him to obtain her an Irish visa to get her out of Berlin. But Robert Briscoe was unable to prevail with the Department of Justice ove