Census 2: Jew-ish

There were 22 Jewish people in Waterford at the last census, up from 9 in 1991.  I don’t know if 22 constitute a community but it would be nice to see another increase this time around.  The Irish Jewish community is small, just 1930 in the last census, down from a peak of 3907 in 1946.  It was never a big community and was made up largely of people fleeing Czarist oppression on their way to America but finding themselves dumped in Cork and Dublin by enterprising if unscrupulous ships captains, only some of whom had the decency to tell their passengers that Cobh wasn’t Ellis Island. David Baddiel’s grandfather ended up in Cardiff by the same stroke.  Of course we could have opened the country up to Jewish refugees in the thirties and forties, but the Irish government preferred Catholics.  Honourable individuals, including some from Waterford’s Quaker community, took Jewish children in themselves, but this extraordinary maiden Dail speech by Oliver Flanagan gives a taste of some of the countervailing views in the country at the time. But at each census I give a glance to the relative health of the Jewish population because Jewish culture, and more to the point, Jewish humour has had a big impact on my world view and no doubt that of many a goy.  It started with Woody Allen, who’s Jewish references couldn’t be missed, but very quickly as a young comedy fan you start to realise that so many of the people who make you laugh are Jews: Mel Brooks, Neil Simon (I don’t know why the Irish surname “Murray” sounds Jewish as a first name, but it does), the Marx Brothers, Gary Shandling, Larry David, Jack Benny, Larry Gelbart and Walther Matthau, who informed us that words that begin with a K are funny, like cucumber - very true.  It’s only a little afterwards that you begin to realise that there are also funny Jews in Britain; Peter Sellers, Stephen Fry, Sid James. Woody Allen was the king though.  He made films about anguished upper middle-class Manhattan intellectuals living in despair in the world’s greatest city, by rights living in Waterford you shouldn’t have been able to relate to any of it, but we all know what its like to be a nebbish. What’s particularly poignant in some of his best movies is the comedy of Jewish social mobility.  One associates the Jewish community these days with middle-class respectability, business and the professions but people like  Woody Allen and Philip Roth were the sons of working-class parents and grandsons of Eastern European peasants, in Stardust Memories Charlotte Rampling’s character talks about the incestuous frisson of her decadent intellectual family to which Woody responds “we didn’t do any of that in our family, my mother was too busy putting the boiled chicken through the de-flavourising machine”. A lot of modern American Jewish humour comes from a scepticism about and shame of the fruits of prosperity and we could relate to that until 2008.  But the tough immigrant background of American Jews is often overlooked.  In the twenties Jewish hoods like Meyer Lansky and Dutch Schultz were every bit as bloodthirsty as their Irish and Italian counterparts.  And this points to the other aspect of my childhood interest Jewishness. I mentioned before an unhealthy although hardly unique taste for all the things military. Since the Second World War there hasn’t really been the kind of conventional tank versus tank warfare that  boys love to read about, except in the middle east and in particular the 1973 war when Israel’s back was against the wall. The astonishing Israeli defence of the Golan Heights, the audacity of the counter-offensive over the Suez, these were stories to warm the heart of a twelve year old boy, and the term “tanks destroyed” is so much more palatable than “four men incinerated”.  The heroes of those battles; Israel Tal, Ariel Sharon, Avigdor Kahalani, Moshe Dayan, Yanush Ben Gal were not nebbish, but citizen soldiers worthy of the early days of the Roman Republic. I first heard one of these Israeli military men talk when a young government minister called Benjamin Netanyahu briefed the world’s press on the violence of the Palestinian Intifada.  He was a man’s man, broad shouldered and deep voiced, confident, like the Israeli state calm but with a capacity, you suspected, for violence if necessary.  He sounded American of course, but nothing like Woody Allen. His condemnation of the Palestinian stone throwers  was so convinxcung that it took some time for a fourteen year old brain to realise that what he was describing was, as we would say in Waterford, “young fellas throwing brickers”, and they were the mighty Israeli Army, victors of the Golan Heights.  And these young fellas throwing brickers were in their own land and didn’t really have much hope for the future against the mighty Israeli Army, victors of the Golan Heights.  The bravery and determination needed to create the Israeli state in 1948 remains impressive but there were innocent victims in that achievement and those innocent victims now have grandchildren and great grandchildren who remain victims.  Jewish humour so often speaks to the misfortune of those who live in a world beyond their control, Israel seems determined never to let that happen to it.  A robust approach admittedly which may be feeding a new wave of anti-semitism.  Anyway, that's enough reflections on a highly sensitive topic that no two people in the world can agree on and here's to a healthy Jewish community here.

Census 1: Catholic-ish

This year’s British census is likely be the last ever conducted, but we’re not going to be so lucky.  The thing is we don't really need it.  Yes the census information from 1901 and 1911 recently published online provides a fascinating insight into the lives of our ancestors but our great grandchildren are going to have a sea of useless information on us in years to come, floating about in the detritus of the internet.  While we might be excited to learn where our grandfathers lived in the years before the First World War, thanks to facebook our descendents are going to know our opinion of Thierry Henry’s handball, where we went on holidays in 2007, what we thought of Police Academy 4, and that on August 19^th 2011 we poisoned two grandparents at a hastily prepared barbeque – lol.  There has been some criticism in the UK on the intrusive nature of the questions in their census (which don’t seem that different to ours) but most questions will be uncomplicated for most people, except one – your religion.  An interesting atheist movement has emerged internationally in the last ten years, partly in response to a perceived increase in the influence of the religious right in the States, partly to the rise of radical Islam and partly a response to a type of multiculturalism which adopts a hands-off approach to religious practices that the students of the enlightenment consider barbaric.  Just as the seeming resurgence of religion (as a lobby if not a practice) fueled the new atheist movement, the new atheist movement is a godsend to the religious (can atheists be a godsend?). So in this year’s census there’s been a campaign for ordinary Irish people to fess up and admit they're not really catholics: births, deaths and marriages don’t count.  Presumably the more atheists in the census the stronger the argument that the church should be removed from certain services, particularly in education. On the other hand, some catholic voices have welcomed the plans the church announced last year that it would divest some schools.  It’s felt that catholic primary schools are no longer really catholic, as management feel they can’t be more robust in their doctrine with so many parents having no choice but to send their children to the local catholic school.  Better to have secular schools and real catholic schools and get rid of the wishy-washy catholicism practiced in schools today.  Then everyone would be happy, and shout at each other from behind their respective trenches.  Except…what if most people want to be wishy washy catholics? Maybe they don’t believe in the virgin birth but like Christmas? Maybe they don’t go to church but are good Christians? Are careless about the destination of their sperm but like the psalms? Maybe they’ve seen the Cistine Chapel, the work of Zurbarán or the cathedral at Chartes and think “I don’t believe in any of it but catholics have the best art so I’m in”.  There are no boxes in the census form for "sort-of catholic", "a bit catholic", or "only when I’m drunk".  The wishy-washies are ignored and I think sneered at by both the catholics and the atheists.  Hypocrites who don't know what they believe in.  But I’m not so sure people who are not so sure about stuff are bad people, it seems pretty human to me. Of course you can always take the mick in the census.  If it wasn’t for the fear of a spare skin examination I'm always tempted to tick the Jewish box. More on that anon.