Patrick Comerford
During my short visit to Dublin last week, I was staying in Rathmines, and spent some time both days wandering around ‘Little Jerusalem’, looking for houses that had once been home to the Comerford, Levitas and Kernoff families.
These included houses in Lennox Street, one of the many narrow streets in this area between the South Circular Road and the Grand Canal, between Clanbrassil Street and Portobello.
Over the decades, the residents of Lennox Street included the brothers Jack and Patrick Comerford, who lived at No 46; the playwright and twice Lord Mayor of Dublin John McCann, who was born at No 6 Lennox Street in 1905; the Republican revolutionary Harry Boland, who lived at No 26; and the sculptor John Hughes, who once lived at No 28.
When Maurice Elliman arrived in Dublin in 1900, he first lodged with the Smullian family at No 38 Lennox Street and soon married Leah Smullian. He was the founder of the De Luxe, Metropole and Corinthian cinemas, and became the proprietor of the Savoy cinemas and of the Gaiety Theatre, the Theatre Royal and the Queen’s Theatre. He also founded the Walworth Road synagogue, now the Irish Jewish Museum.
Two long established Jewish institutions on Lennox Street have been the small synagogue or hebra at No 32, founded in 1876 or soon after, and the Bretzel Bakery at 1a Lennox Street.
The Lennox Street shul finally closed its doors over half a century ago in 1974, and moved to Stratford College on Zion Road, Rathgar, where it continued to worship until 1981. However, the Bretzel has survived the many social changes in the area, including the exodus of the Jewish community from Little Jerusalem to Rathfarnham, Terenure and Churchtown in the second half of the 20th century, and the gentrification of the area in the earlier part of this century.
The Bretzel is a three-storey, 19th century building, and it is one of Dublin’s oldest surviving artisan bakeries. The business traces its beginnings back a century and a half when it was started by Moses Grinspon, a refugee Jewish baker from the Russian empire, who lived on Kingsland Parade.
It became Elliman’s Bakery in 1900, and the earliest deeds say the first brick oven was placed there that year.
Solomon and Malka Clein ran the bakery from the 1920s, when his family moved from Cork to Dublin. When Weinrock’s closed in the late 1920s, Cleins was the only kosher bakery left in the Jewish community in Dublin.
The business was then run by their son-in-law, Syd Barnett, until 1936, when he sold it to Barney Stein. Harry Clein, who married Barney Stein’s widow Ida (née Herman), became associated with the bakery in 1948. The staff included Fred Keane, the head baker, and his assistant, Christy Hackett, neither of whom was Jewish.
For some years, Sidney Benson and his brother George ran the bakery as Bensons. They had moved from Liverpool to Dublin after World War II, and when Sidney retired to Liverpool, Christy Hackett tool charge.
The bakery became a meeting place on Sunday mornings for nurses and doctors coming off night duty in the Adelaide Hospital in the 1950s and 1960s.
Christy Hackett rented the business from Ida Clein in 1964 and changed the name to the Bretzel, from a Transylvanian bread stick in Romania, was chosen to emphasise the shop’s East European links. From 1964, this was the only kosher supplier of supervised bread and cake in Dublin, and the main product was the Jewish challah or plaited bread.
Christy Hackett’s son, Morgan Hackett, joined the business in 1970. Christy died in 1989, and when Ida Clein died in 1996, Morgan Hackett bought the Bretzel. But both the Jewish community and the Bretzel suffered a setback a year later when the new Chief Rabbi, Dr Gavin Broder, decreed that cakes supplied by the Bretzel could no longer be certified kosher. Morgan Hackett often explained that if he made a profit one week, then he could run it for another seven days.
William Despard, an engineer from Limerick, and his business partner Cormac Keenan bought the business ‘lock, stock and barrel’ from Morgan Hackett in 2000. The bakery had about ten staff, including four skilled bakers. William Despard was young and enthusiastic about putting it back on the map and he turned the bakery’s fortunes around.
The Bretzel also took over Arbutus Breads in Cork after Declan and Patsy Ryan retired. |nother expansion involved buying Rossa Crowe’s Le Levain bakery. Bretzel also built a third bakery, in Kilcullen, Co Kildare, although Covid forced them shut the Kildare factory for over a year. They have since developed a bakery school in Kilcullen bakery, teaching French and international baking techniques.
The Bretzel is now an award-winning bakery, with its main bakery in a state-of-the-art facility in Harold’s Cross, supplying individuals and companies throughout Dublin, including making all the bread for Dollard & Co.
On a busy night, the Bretzel bakes 10 to 12 metric tons of bread, ranging over different sizes: that translates to the equivalent of about 20,000 boules a night. Bretzel’s best breads include its pain de maison, Le Levain sourdough and Boulin, a 2kg loaf. The San Francisco sourdough won Bretzel’s first Blas na hÉireann gold medal. Its pain de maison boule won the Supreme Champion award in 2020.
The Bretzel on the corner of Lennox Street and Richmond Row and just off Richmond Road, between Kelly’s Corner and Portobello Road, is a busy and popular café and remains the flagship of the business.
Naturally, I stopped in the Bretzel for late morning coffee while I was walking around Portobello and ‘Little Jerusalem’ area last week. The tiny, forged iron doors of the double-decker brick ‘Scotch’ oven that was the cornerstone of the business for over 110 years, are inset in the shop’s walls today.
The Bretzel Bakery continues to make kosher bread, including traditional challah, onsite and under supervision. However, only specified items are currently approved as kosher under the Kashrut Commission of Ireland, and customers are advised to check the list in store for kosher items.
Today, Deli 613 on Upper Rathmines Road is the only kosher deli in Ireland. It takes its name from the 613 mitzvot, or commandments that are a traditional, foundational concept in Judaism. They consist of 248 positive commands, or commands to perform actions, and 365 negative commands, or commands to abstain from actions, totaling 613 precepts. Deli 613 is under the joint supervision of the KCI. It has sandwiches and salads, a grocery section and a coffee bar, and I had a late lunch there one afternoon last week.
Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום
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