Irish Questions and Jewish Questions

The Irish and the Jews are two of the classic outliers of modern Europe. Both struggled with

their lack of formal political sovereignty in the nineteenth-century. Simultaneously

European and not European, both endured a bifurcated status, perceived as racially inferior and

yet also seen as a natural part of the European landscape. Both sought to deal with their

subaltern status through nationalism; both had a tangled, ambiguous, and sometimes violent

relationship with Britain and the British Empire; and both sought to revive ancient languages as

part of their drive to create a new identity. The career of Irish politician Robert Briscoe and the

travails of Leopold Bloom are just two examples of the delicate balancing of Irish and Jewish

identities in the first half of the twentieth century.

Irish Questions and Jewish Questions explores these shared histories, covering several

centuries of the Jewish experience in Ireland, as well as events in Israel-Palestine and North

America. The authors examine the leading figures of both national movements to reveal how

each had an active interest in the successes, and failures, of the other. Bringing together

leading and emerging scholars from the fields of Irish studies and Jewish studies, this volume

captures the most recent scholarship on their comparative history with nuance

and remarkable insight.