Life, love and friendship in Cork’s Jewtown

My research into Cork’s Jewish history started in 2017, when I was writing a musical play set in Cork in the early 1900s. The synagogue had closed the year before. To date, I have interviewed over 50 local residents and Cork-born Jews and their descendants now living world-wide. After I made my Cork Jewish Culture Virtual Walk documentary during lockdown, many people contacted me to tell me about their life in Cork’s Jewish community, sending me memoirs and photos, which I have recently compiled into a digital archive to be housed in Cork Public Museum. My book, Ghosts of Jewish Cork – People, Places, Culture, is currently seeking a publisher.

Early in my research, I was introduced to a lovely lady called Siobhán Moynihan. Siobhán lived her whole life in Monerea Terrace in Cork. She fondly remembered her Jewish neighbour, an old friend of Siobhán’s mother, Fanny Goldwater née Sandler. Fanny died the same year that Woolworths closed in Cork, 1984. Siobhán remembered it well, because Fanny had helped Siobhán to get a job in Woolworths when she was a young adult. Fanny’s family were amongst the orthodox Jewish families who had moved to Cork from small villages in northern Lithuania in the late 1800s. Fanny was the last of the Jewish community to live in the ‘Jewtown’ area, which encompasses Albert Road, Monerea Terrace, Eastville, and Hibernian Buildings.

Siobhán told me that her mother used to go in and light the gas in the middle room for Fanny on Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath which falls on Friday night and Saturday, as religious Jews don’t handle money on the day of rest, or do any other kind of work including striking a match, according to Jewish law. They spent their whole lives a few doors from each other, and were in and out of each other’s houses, watching TV together, especially after Harry Goldwater, Fanny’s husband, passed away. Their lives were shared although their backgrounds were so different -one Jewish, the other Catholic.

Siobhán’s house had formerly been the home of a Jewish family, the Elyans, and when they moved away from the area, one item remained - a mezuzah, on the door of the front room. A mezuzah is a small box with a scroll of parchment in it, on which a prayer – the Shema - is inscribed. This item is fixed to the doorposts of Jewish houses. Siobhán was very proud of her mezuzah, and even when asked to give it to the Jewish community, she refused, as it was so special to her. She cherished it, dusted and polished it, and promised that on her death it would be passed on to a Jewish organisation.

One day around 2005, a certain Fay Robinson was searching for links to her Jewish family in Cork, and found Siobhán. Fay’s mother was Dinah, a sister of Harry Goldwater. Dinah and Harry had also grown up in Jewtown, at Hibernian Buildings. Fay and Siobhán became great pals, so continuing the Jewish-Catholic friendships through the generations. Fay remembers that when she got a Christmas card from Siobhán, it was always signed, ‘From the lady with the most polished mezuzah in Ireland.’

In recent years, the Elyan family, who lived in the area for over 50 years, have dedicated a bench in Shalom Park. This is the small park in the ‘Jewtown’ area, where the gas balloons once were when Siobhán was a girl, when there were many more Jewish families living in the area. Shalom Park commemorates the former community through its name, which means Peace, and also through Evening Echo, an installation of street lamps created by artist Maddie Leach. Eight lamps light every night, but one of the lamps lights up only once a year, on the eighth day of Chanukah, the Festival of Lights. This is a lovely occasion for locals and Jewish visitors alike, and is followed by the lighting of Chanukah candles in the City Hall.

Next door to Fanny Goldwater lived Rev Khan and his wife and family, in Monerea House. He was the minister to Cork’s Jewish community in the 1920s. That house is now derelict, but Rev Khan is not forgotten. His grand-daughter Carol visited Cork in summer 2025 to see the old sites. A few weeks earlier, I had been contacted by a local woman, Linda Wadsworth, whose grandfather had been a butcher for the Jewish community on Wednesday afternoons, when his own workplace had a half-day. I introduced Carol to Linda, and it was amazing for them to meet up and realise that their grandfathers would have been colleagues a hundred years ago.

Hemmy Elyan was one of the children who grew up in the area. He had a lovely voice, and would have sang along with gusto in the synagogue when Rev Khan led the prayers on a Saturday morning. When Hemmy was 4 or 5 years old there was a visiting group of Polish Jewish actors who put on a show in Yiddish in a big room at 9, South Terrace next to the synagogue. The play was Das Pintele Yid (The Focal Point of Jewishness) and Hemmy was selected to act with them. He had to lie in his stage mother’s arms, and sing the song Das Pintele Yid. I have a recording of him singing this song when he was 85 years old, in an interview with his grandson Stuart, and it’s a lovely reminder of the vitality of the former community.

Hemmy remembered Chatzke Lovitch’s shop in Eastville, which sold pickled cucumbers from a barrel. When there was a bit of extra money, Hemmy’s mother Sarah would send him to get two pickled cucumbers, and he would sometimes steal a couple extra from the barrel, on the pretext of adding a little salt water to the tin containing the gherkins he had just purchased. Hemmy said that local people couldn’t pronounce the gutteral ‘ch’ and used to call Chatzke ‘Mr Chatset’. Chatzke Lovitch was also remembered by Hemmy’s brother Lawrence (Larry) Elyan, who wrote in the 1949 Cork Jewish Times about some of the religious characters in Cork’s Jewish community of 30 years earlier. Larry Elyan later became one of the founders of the Progressive Synagogue in Dublin, and also acted in some plays in Dublin, including The Strings, My Lord, Are False.

Although it is about 100 years since these events took place, the old community is not forgotten, and during Heritage Week this year, I led a walk around the Jewish areas, and gave a couple of talks, one in Cork Public Museum where there is a permanent exhibition of some of the artefacts from the former synagogue. I hope it helps to keep the memory of the old community alive, and to introduce younger Corkonians to a little-known part of the city’s history.

This feature originally appeared in the 2025 Holly Bough .