Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has big shoes to fill. Appointed this week as the 11th British chief rabbi, he will succeed Jonathan Sacks, an internationally renowned author and public intellectual who speaks frequently on moral, philosophical and theological affairs. The widespread assumption among British Jews has long been that a Mirvis chief rabbinate would be quite…
As soon as I heard the name of Great Britain’s newly named chief rabbi, I knew it sounded familiar. I met Ephraim Mirvis back in 1986, when I was a foreign correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer based in London, and he was the relatively new chief rabbi of Ireland. I was young for my job….
Ireland would support a European Union ban on goods produced in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, but “there is no prospect for reaching an agreement” on such a ban, the Irish foreign minister said. “Ireland would support such a ban [on goods from Israeli settlments in the West Bank] at E.U. level,” Eamon Gilmore said in…
A popular Irish broadcaster and columnist said he is not anti-Semitic, after calling Israel “the cancer in foreign affairs” during a broadcast. “Israel is the cancer in foreign affairs. It polarizes the Islamic community of the world against the rest of the world,” Vincent Browne said last week on his TV3 channel show, Tonight with…
In the land of his ancestors, Paul Ryan’s Irish charm is failing him. Despite his name, Roman Catholic faith and immigrant-made-good family history, the Irish half of the Republican ticket is failing to win the allegiance of the old country from Barack Obama, a skilled hand at playing the Irish card. Obama struck public relations…
A surprising fact about the Irish: they love menorahs, apparently. So says IrishCentral, which reports that “you can count them by the hundred” each December between Dublin and Galway. It’s unlikely the candelabras belong to actual Jews — just 2,000 of the country’s 4.4 million citizens are Jewish, the piece says. The trend has gone…
Irish bagel lovers aren’t having much luck: a 13.5% value-added tax will be tacked on to the traditionally Jewish favorite for the first time. Under new plans by the Irish government to raise desperately needed revenue, bagels, croissants, garlic bread and other premium baked goods will be hit with the tax next month. Consumers are…
“Others have a nationality,” the writer Brendan Behan famously noted. “The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.” We also share a love of corned beef and raucous fiddle music — think folk and klezmer. Still, an Irish-Jewish fusion restaurant seems like a stretch. Enter the Star and Shamrock, a “modern-day neighborhood melting pot” on…
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