Five photographs of Dublin are included in a new pocket guide for visitors and tourists

The new 100-page ‘Dublin Visitor Guide 2025-2026’, edited by Sally Davies, includes five of my photographs

Patrick Comerford

I was back in Dublin last week for a family visit, and naturally there was a rush of memories even in the short gap of five of six hours, between arriving in the airport and leaving for the airport once again.

I visited the house in Knocklyon where I lived for over 20 years from 1996 to 2017, and Christ Church Cathedral, where I had been a canon for 10 years. But I also saw schools and I had attended, childhood and family homes, the church where I had been confirmed, streets I had played on, suburbs where I spent some of my childhood and teenage years, places where I had worked, and bookshops I once frequently browsed in.

It is not a good idea to have fly-in/fly-out-again to places you have once lived in, and not to have time to meet family members, friends and former colleagues and neighbours. I need time to amble around, to stop and talk, to sit and sip coffee, to stroll through old haunts.

When I moved back to Dublin in my mid-20s, from the Wexford People to The Irish Times, I felt out of place, and it took many years to adjust to life there. I left this time with memories and a small degree of feeling out of place, but also the hope of being back again in the weeks or months ahead, for family visits and perhaps the possibility of a reunion of the 1969 year from Gormanston.

But I left too with the pleasure of knowing that five of my photographs have been used by Sally Davies in her new slimline 100-page Dublin Visitor Guide 2025-2026, which she has edited for Smarttraveller.

Three of these photographs were taken last year, and my photographs in this new guide include churches, street art and photographs of the Portobello and ‘Little Jerusalem’ area of Dublin.

Last year, she used nine of my photographs in her Co. Clare Visitor Guide and one photograph in her County Kerry Visitor Guide, both also published by Smarttraveller365.

The Dublin Visitor Guide 2025-2026is a 100-page publication produced as a comprehensive directory for tourists. It features travel ideas, local business listings and discount coupons and covers a wide range of visitor essentials, including where to eat and stay, directories of restaurants, pubs, and accommodation, and highlights of major historical landmarks, museums and hidden gems, as well as special deals, exclusive offers and service discounts.

In her introduction, Sally Davies says ‘we have a deep passion for Ireland and have crafted this guide to share the hidden gems and unforgettable experiences to be had in the city’.

Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

My photograph of Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge (p 24), has this accompanying text:

Close to the US Embassy, and Herbert Park, is St Bartholomew’s Church, designed by Thomas Henry Wyatt, built in the Gothic revival style with sandstone facings and Dublin granite. The stairway to the clock tower is in the shape of an Irish round tower, the influence of the Celtic Romantic period. It is also known for its fine music and the choir of boys and men is the only remaining all-male parish church choir in the Church of Ireland. Formed in 2003, the girls choir also plays a prominent role.

Saint Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin, seen from Grafton Street and Ann Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

My photograph of Anne Street (p 30) has this accompanying text:

Home to John Brereton Jewellers, which has five star reviews for their excellent customer service and help with choosing from their unique pieces of diamond jewellery. The street has pharmacies, several cafés one of which is Dolce Sicily, serving showstopping delights from poached cod with orange and fennel salad to pistachio tiramisu, delicious!

Sheridan’s Cheesemongers, which is a rustic shop selling a huge array of cheeses, and accompaniments, who teamed up with the Centre of Food Culture and Samhain Festival to create a mouthwatering festival every November. The imposing St Ann’s Church faces you, known for its concerts, recitals and stained glass windows.

Sir David Attenborough in street art on the corner of Longwood Avenue and the South Circular Road in ‘Little Jerusalem’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Three of photographs from the Portobello, ‘Little Jerusalem and Rathmines areas (pp 44-45) are published with these paragraphs:

Portobello, meaning “beautiful harbour” in Irish, came to be in the 18th century.

So folks say …

In 1861 there was a terrible tragedy on Portobello Bridge. Horses pulling a horse-drawn bus reared up and broke through the bridge railings and plunged the bus down into the canal lock. All but the driver and conductor drowned. One was the father of the Gunne brothers who opened the Gaiety Theatre and one was the niece of Daniel O’Connell. It is said this was the work of the vindictive ghost of the lock keeper, who himself drowned after being sacked for drunkenness. All passengers had to alight before crossing the bridge and walk over after the incident.

In the 1800s, the land round Portobello was part of the Kingsland estate with parkland and fountains before the developers built housing on it, and many entertainers performed there. One of which was Charles Blondin -who had previously crossed the Niagara Falls on a tightrope and cooked omelettes on a stove on the tightrope, which he distributed to lookers-on. His performance in Dublin though, ended in disaster, when his tightrope broke, leading to the scaffolding collapsing which killed two workers, who fell.

In 1858, the Portobello Gardens was leased and while a band played, acrobats entertained and fireworks were set off.

In the mid 1900s, Ever-Ready Batteries was the main employer for the area at Portobello Harbour. When the factory closed, small businesses took over the area and the remainder of the harbour was drained and mainly filled in.

During the late 1900s, many Ashkenazi Jews, fleeing Russia and Eastern Europe settled in Portobello, which was given the nickname “Little Jerusalem”.

The area is vibrant with many walls covered in street art, this one of David Attenborough.

Or this on the side of a Chinese restaurant.

A mural on the side of a Chinese restaurant in Rathmines on the corner of Lower Rathmines and Richmond Hill (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

You must visit the fabulous Bretzel Bakery, who strongly believe in the nutritional goodness of sourdough bread.

The Bretzel Bakery & Cafe serves award winning breads, pastries, cakes, sandwiches & coffee until 4pm every day of the week on Lennox Street, Portobello.

Along the western edge of Portobello, you will find cafés and bars along Clanbrassil Street Lower and dozens on the eastern side at St Kevins Camden Street Lower and Harcourt Street.

The Bretzel on Lennox Street has survived the many social changes in ‘Little Jerusalem’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In her acknowledgements towards the end of the guide (p 94), Sally Davies is generous in her tribute to me when she writes:

‘Thank you for your continuing support with your incredible knowledge (of the world!) and help in allowing me to use your photos Patrick Comerford’

She also provides a link to this blog: www.patrickcomerford.com

I hope she produces more of these guides to other parts of Ireland.

Saying goodbye to Dublin at Dublin Airport last week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 13, Friday 17 April 2026

Tsoureki, a sweet Greek bread traditionally served at Easter, on a table in Panormos, near Rethymnon, on Easter Day (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Our Easter celebrations continue in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Second Sunday of Easter (Easter II) or Easter in the calendar of the Greek. Easter is a 50-day season that continues until the Day of Pentecost.

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

A variety of bread gathered in a basket (see John 6: 1-15) in Panormos, near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 6: 1-15 (NRSVA):

1 After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2 A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3 Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. 5 When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7 Philip answered him, ‘Six months’ wages[b] would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.’ 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 ‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?’ 10 Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down.’ Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. 11 Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ 13 So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.’

15 When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

Five loaves at the preparation for the Eucharist in the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

The feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle – apart from the Resurrection – that is recorded in all four Gospels (see also Matthew 14: 13-21; Mark 6: 32-44; Luke 9: 10-17). The feeding of 4,000 is told by both Mark (Mark 8: 1-9) and Matthew (Matthew 15: 32-38), but by neither Luke nor John.

The story of the multiplication of the loaves and fish and the feeding of the 5,000 is told in a very similar way in all four Gospels, with only minor variations on the place of the miracle or the circumstances surrounding it.

Saint John alone tells us that the feeding and the teaching took place as the Feast of the Passover was drawing near, so both the action and the discourse are to be understood with those particular perspectives.

Some time has passed since the healing of the man by the pool in Jerusalem, the better part of a year perhaps, and we are now back in Galilee in the following spring for the second Passover narrative (see verse 4) in Saint John’s Gospel.

Commentators point to the shift from the Festival of the Booths in the previous chapter and to the significance of the second Passover. But sometimes I wonder are we in danger of missing one other point, no matter how insignificant it may seem at first reading?

There is a story about how the Puritans in New England worked themselves to death in the fields without getting much in return for their back-breaking efforts. So much so that they were in danger of starving to death until the wiser inhabitants of the land taught them a few home truths about living in harmony with the rhythms of the earth. There are times to plant. There are times to rest. There are times to work the soil. And there are times to let the soil rest.

Perhaps the gap between Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 is part of the Hidden Years of Jesus … when he was an adult, when he was in harmony with the rhythms of the earth and the rhythms of life, and when he was preparing for the harvest that is gathered in in Chapter 6.

The story of the multiplication of the loaves as told in John 6 has a number of key details that are intended to remind us as the readers of the Eucharist, and the Eucharistic narrative resumes in verses 51-58. But the story is also one that is full of Messianic hope and harvesting, and of Eucharistic promise, for it recalls the story of King David. When David first fled from King Saul, he fed his small group of followers, those who acknowledged him as the rightful king, with the priest’s bread, asking the priest: ‘Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here’ (I Samuel 21: 3).

The ‘other side’ in verse 1 refers to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was named Tiberias after the city founded ca 20-26 CE by Herod Antipas and named after Tiberias Caesar. In this way, John places the last work done among the Galilean disciples in Gentile territory.

Here too the Galileans are following Jesus because of signs and miracles, and not because of faith (verse 2). Once again, we have the Johannine question about the link between seeing and believing, which we encountered dramatically in the Easter story of Thomas in last Sunday’s Gospel reading (John 20: 19-31).

Christ is seated on the top of the mountain (verse 3). What does this remind us of? The top of Mount Sinai? The mountain of the Transfiguration? The hill of Calvary outside Jerusalem?

This is the time approaching the second Passover (verse 4), so there is a build-up in the number of Passovers being recounted, bringing us towards an expectation of fulfilment at Passover.

Christ lifts up his eyes (verse 5). When the disciples rejoined Christ at the well in Sychar while he was talking with the Samaritan woman, he told them to ‘lift up their eyes’ (John 4: 35, translated in the NRSV as ‘look around you’) and to see the ‘harvest’ of the seed he had been sowing.

The introduction of Philip (verse 5) and Andrew (verse 8) as characters in the scene is typical of John’s style. They represent the disciples. Just as at Jacob’s Well, they have failed to buy or produce enough bread.

Philip’s faith is being tested (verse 6), and, by implication, the faith of all the disciples. Where the NRSV says ‘six months’ wages’ (verse 7), the original Greek says 200 denarii. A denarius was a day’s wage for an unskilled labourer.

John alone mentions the young boy or servant and the barley loaves (verse 9). Barley loaves were the food of poor people and for animals, but strikingly, the barley loaves in this story remind us of the time when Elisha who fed 100 men with 20 loaves of bread (II Kings 4: 42-44), saying: ‘For thus says the Lord, “They shall eat and have some left”.’ The feeding of the multitude therefore may be seen as a demonstrative prelude to Jesus’ words, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in will never be thirsty’ (John 6: 35).

The feeding with the fish is a prelude to, looks forward to, another meal by the shores of Lake Tiberias, ehen Jesus feeds the disciples with bread and fish (see John 21: 1-19). The fish is an early Christian symbol of faith in the Risen Christ: Ichthus (ἰχθύς, capitalised as ΙΧΘΥC) is the Greek word for fish, and can be read as an acrostic, a word formed from the first letters of several words, spelling out Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ (Iēsous Christos Theou Huios, Sōtēr, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour).

Christ asks the disciples to make the people sit down – well, not so much to sit down as to recline (verse 10). They are asked to recline on the grass as they would at a banquet or a feast – just as he did with the disciples at the Last Supper.

Notice the Eucharistic actions in verse 11: Dom Gregory Dix identified the four-fold movement in the Eucharist as taking, blessing (giving thanks), breaking and giving.

John alone has Christ commanding the disciples to gather up the fragments lest they perish (verse 12). Gathering is an act of reverential economy towards the gifts of God. But we return later to the Eucharistic imagery here too. Meanwhile, the gathering also anticipates the gathering that takes place in connection with the work of the Son as he receives from the Father those who are given to him, ‘that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me …’ (John 6: 39; see also John 17: 12).

There are twelve baskets – one for each tribe of Israel and one for each of the twelve disciples (verse 13). Mark alone mentions fragments of fish being picked up too.

In Saint Mark’s Gospel, Christ forces his disciples to leave immediately (see Mark 6: 45). But only in Saint John’s Gospel (verse 15) are we given the reason for this: the people want to make Christ their earthly king (compare this with the reference to the test in verse 6). When they want to make him their king, they want to make him a political messiah, opposing Rome. But Jesus would not accept this way of being king or of being messiah (see John 18: 36).

In Saint John’s Gospel, the account of the Feeding of the Multitude is followed with the conversation Jesus has with the crowds who follow him to Capernaum. The main motif in the passage (verses 26-59) centres on Jesus saying: ‘I am that bread of life’ (verse 48). In this way, John links the Feeding of the Multitude with the feeding of the people in the wilderness with manna and with the heavenly banquet and the coming of the kingdom (see John 6: 25-40).

In the Fourth Gospel, the preceding food miracle is at the Wedding in Cana, where Jesus turns the water into wine. Now we have a miracle with bread. The Eucharistic connection of bread and wine is obvious even to the first-time reader.

The story of the multiplication of the loaves as told here has a number of key details that intended to remind the reader of the Eucharist, and the Eucharistic narrative resumes in verses 51-58.

• In verse 10, the crowd is asked to recline on the grass, as if they were at a banquet, a Passover meal or a wedding feast, just as Christ and the 12 ate while reclining at the Last Supper.

• Once again, notice the Eucharistic actions in verse 11. Dom Gregory Dix identified the four-fold movement in the Eucharist as taking, blessing (giving thanks), breaking and giving.

• John alone uses εὐχαριστήσας (eucharistisas, verse 11), from the verb εὐχαριστέω (eucharisteo), ‘to give thanks,’ from which we derive the word Eucharist for the liturgy.

• John alone depicts Christ himself distributing the bread as he will do again at the Last Supper.

• John alone has Christ commanding the disciples to gather up the fragments lest they perish. The Greek word συνάγω (synago, to gather up) gives us the word συναγωγή (synagogue) for the assembly of faith, and the word σύναξις (synaxis) for the gathering or first part of the Liturgy. The Greek word for ‘fragments’, κλάσμα (klasma), appears also in early Christian literature as the liturgical word for the host or the bread at the Eucharist.

Jesus puts no questions of belief to either the disciples or the crowd when he feeds them on the mountainside. They did not believe in the Resurrection – it had yet to happen. But Jesus feeds them, and feeds them indiscriminately. The disciples wanted to send them away, but Jesus wants to count them in. Christ invites more people to the banquet than we can fit into our churches.

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!
Christ is Risen!

Five loaves in the Bretzel in ‘Little Jerusalem’ in Portobello in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 17 April 2026):

‘Stocked with Hope’ provides the theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 46-47. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Mayank Thomas, Programme Manager, the Synodical Board of Social Services, Church of North India.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 17 April 2026) invites us to pray:

God, bless women like Shaila who are using small businesses to provide for their families. May her efforts reflect dignity, purpose, and hope for economic independence and community leadership.

The Collect:

Almighty Father,
you have given your only Son to die for our sins
and to rise again for our justification:
grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness
that we may always serve you
in pureness of living and truth;
through the merits of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord God our Father,
through our Saviour Jesus Christ
you have assured your children of eternal life
and in baptism have made us one with him:
deliver us from the death of sin
and raise us to new life in your love, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
for whom no door is locked, no entrance barred:
open the doors of our hearts,
that we may seek the good of others
and walk the joyful road of sacrifice and peace,
to the praise of God the Father.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Bread and wine as part of a simple meal in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Arthur Fields, ‘The Man on the Bridge’, is a bridge between Dublin and Kyev, and with Jewish refugees from Ukraine

The photographer Arthur Fields (1901-1994), known affectionately to generations of Dubliners as the ‘Man on the Bridge’

Patrick Comerford

Tuesday next marks the fourth anniversary of the Russia’s launch of a large-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, expanding its war against Ukraine and creating Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.

Of course, the Russia-Ukraine War began eight years earlier, in February 2014, with Russia’s covert invasion and annexation of Crimea. The conflict escalated significantly with Russia’s full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, which expanded the existing conflict in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

The life story of the photographer Arthur Fields (1901-1994), known affectionately to generations of Dubliners as the ‘Man on the Bridge’, provides a link between Ireland and Ukraine, a link between Dublin and Kyiv, and is a reminder of the sufferings of Jewish refugees who fled pogroms, antisemitism and oppression in the Russian Empire and of the positive contributions refugee families to countries that receive and welcome them.

Arthur Fields was born Abraham Feldman on 27 October 1901 in Dublin to Ukrainian Jewish parents Malka, also known as Molly or Mary (Sweed) and Simon Feldman, a draper, of 6 Raymond Street off the South Circular Road. He had four brothers: Oran, Jacob, David and Moses, and a sister who died in infancy.

Simon Feldman was originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, where his father had been a prosperous rabbi. Simon Feldman fled Ukraine with his wife and their two eldest sons, in 1891 or 1885, escaping the pogroms that spread across the Tsarist empire following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. About two million Jews fled the Russian empire between 1881 and 1914, with around 3,500 arriving in Ireland, the majority settling in Dublin.

Feldman is family name found in a number of Jewish refugees who fled Ukraine at the time, and a number of Feldman families were living in Dublin by the end of the 19th and the early 20th century; the comedian Marty Feldman (1934-1982) was a son of Myer Feldman, an East End gown manufacturer who was a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant from Kyiv.

Simon Feldman left Kyiv in the middle of the night with his family in a horse-drawn carriage, taking whatever valuables they could manage. Like many of the new ‘foreign Jews’ who arrived in Dublin, they settled around the South Circular Road and Portobello area of Dublin, and lived at a number of addresses in the ‘Little Jerusalem’ area, including 20 Windsor Terrace (1897), 24 Saint Kevin’s Road (1899) and 6 Raymond Street (1901), when Arthur was born as Abraham Feldman on 27 October 1901.

The Feldman family later changed their name to Fields and the children took on English-sounding versions of their Hebrew-sounding names: Oran became Harry, Jacob became Jack, Moses became Morris, David remained David, and Abraham became Arthur, although continued to be known to his family as Abby.

Arthur Fields went to Saint Catherine’s School, Donore Avenue, and then to Wesley College on Saint Stephen’s Green, before going into the tailoring trade. As a young man, he visited his elder brother Jack who had a successful real estate business in the US and his brothers Harry, Morris and David in England.

For a time, he lived in Chalkwell in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, where he and his brother David Fields (1897-1956) bought a house. He met his wife-to-be, Doreen Cracknell (1917-1990) from the East End in London, at a dance in Southend in 1934. Doreen was 17 and Arthur was 33 when they married and moved to Dublin. They first lived Sandymount, but then lived for the rest of their married life at 602 Howth Road, Raheny. They were the parents of one daughter, Norma, and three sons, Bernard, Philip and David.

Doreen was an Anglican, and Arthur was largely non-observant as a Jew, but he retained a strong personal religious commitment and attended Adelaide Road Synagogue on high days and holy days.

Arhur Fields began working as a street photographer in the 1930s and worked on O’Connell Bridge for half a century

Arhur Fields left the tailoring business and moved into street photography in the 1930s. Alongside other street photographers jostling for customers, Arthur established his patch on O’Connell Bridge, but also worked on O’Connell Street, particularly at night to photograph young people visiting the street’s cafés, ballrooms and cinemas, at a time when the street was at the heart of bustling night life in Dublin

He would approach potential customers, take their photograph, ask whether they would like the picture, give them a ticket for a local studio, where they could pay for the photograph have it posted out to them. His wife Doreen developed the photographs – first in premises on Pearse Street, then in a darkroom at home – and posted the prints out to customers.

Arthur was a sturdy and committed man, and would walk from Raheny to the bridge each day and back home again, a 10-mile round trip. He was cautioned for peddling or selling with a licence on several occasions in the early days. But he persevered and was eventually tolerated by the gardai. He began using a Polaroid camera in the 1960s so he could give customers their photographs on the spot.

For almost half of his 50-year career on the bridge, Fields worked one side while his older brother David worked the other. The brothers shared a close bond, David lived with Arthur and his family in Raheny, and the two spoke Yiddish to each other at home. Their mother Molly died at Kilworth Road, Drimnagh, in 1940.

David died on 13 June 1956, leaving his younger brother bereft: Arthur had a breakdown and was given a course of electric shock treatment, before returning to work on the bridge. He travelled further afield at times, taking photographs in resorts like Bray, Co Wicklow, and Bundoran, Co Donegal, or at the Spring Show at the RDS, Ballsbridge, or at the Ploughing Championships.

The ‘Man on Bridge’ multimedia project was launched in 2014

Privately, Fields did not have good social skills, nor did he have close bonds with many other people outside his family circle, nor did he take part in family occasions or attend any of the weddings of his four children, choosing to work instead.

But, while Arthur Fields may have been just one among the many street photographers in Dublin in his day, he was the most prominent and had the lengthiest career. He finally left his pitch on O’Connell Bridge in 1988 at the age of 87. Doreen died two years later on 2 April 1990. He continued to live alone at home in Raheny with the help of his neighbours and family. He died of heart failure in Beaumont Hospital on 11 April 1994 at the age of 92. At his funeral and cremation in Glasnevin Cemetery, many people brought photographs he had taken to share with his family.

The Irish Times described him as ‘one of Dublin’s best known characters’, while the Evening Herald called him a ‘Dublin institution for thousands of people visiting the city’. Declan Kiberd wrote in the Irish Press: ‘Those who mourned the Man on the Bridge … may have been lamenting not just their lost youth, but the lost innocence of an era which Arthur Fields in a way symbolised.’

The legacy of Arthur Fields is his archive of city life in Dublin. During his 50-year career from the 1930s to the 1980s, it is estimated, he took at least 182,500 photographs. These photographs chart the many changes in the city, from fashions in clothing and changes in hairstyles to the disappearance of Nelson’s Pillar. The many celebrities he photographed on O’Connell Bridge or on O’Connell Street include Noel Purcell, Gene Tierney, Bing Crosby, Margaret Rutherford, Brendan Behan, Jack Doyle and George Harrison.

Fields never kept any negatives or copies of his images. His archives survive primarily in homes across Ireland. To bring some of these images together, the ‘Man on Bridge’ multimedia project was launched on the Late Late Show on RTÉ in 2014, asking people to submit their photographs. This resulted in a book of 250 images and an exhibition of 3,400 photographs at the Gallery of Photography in Dublin later that year.

RTÉ broadcast a documentary, Man on Bridge on 28 December 2014. A further book, Man on the Bridge: more photos by Arthur Fields, was published in 2017, when the archive had reached 6,000 photographs.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

Bethel Solomons, the prominent Jewish doctor who won ten caps in international rugby for Ireland

A portrait of Dr Bethel Solomons by his sister Estella Solomons (Irish Jewish Museum, ©The Trustees of the Estate of Estella Solomons)

Patrick Comerford

This is another weekend of wall-to-wall, back-to-back rugby in the Six Nations Championship, with Ireland playing Italy tomorrow (2:10 pm) and England playing Scotland (4:40 pm), and then Wales and France on Sunday afternoon (15:10).

Despite a disappointing 36-14 defeat by France in the Stade de France last week, my fervour for Irish rugby is undimmed, and my hopes, however unfounded, remain high this weekend.

Few Jewish players have played at the highest levels in Irish rugby history. Bethel Solomons (1885-1965) is the most prominent Jewish Irish rugby international, capped as a forward for Ireland in the early 20th century, and also a noted doctor. Later, another former Irish rugby international, Tony Ward, discovered his Jewish heritage with dramatic revelations in recent years.

Dr Bethel Solons was the Master of the Rotunda Hospital, an actor at the Abbey Theatre and President of the Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation. In addition, he was an international rugby player.

Bethel Albert Herbert Solomons was born on 27 February 1885 into a prominent Jewish family who are one of the oldest continuous Jewish families in Ireland. The Solomons family came to Ireland from England in 1824, when Elias Solomons opened his optician’s shop in Nassau Street, close to Trinity College Dublin. His son, Maurice Solomons (1832-1922), continued the optician’s practice at 19 Nassau Street, on the corner with South Frederick Street. He is mentioned by James Joyce in Ulysses, and was also a JP and the honorary consul in Ireland of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

James Joyce in street art in Nassau Street … Maurice Solomons (is mentioned by James Joyce in ‘Ulysses’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Bethel’s elder brother Edwin Solomons (1879-1964) was a stockbroker and prominent member of the Dublin Jewish community. Their sister Estella Solomons (1882-1968) was a leading artist; she married the poet and publisher James Sullivan Starkey (1879-1958), a Methodist, who wrote under the penname Seumas O’Sullivan. Their younger sister Sophie trained as an opera singer.

Bethel Solomons went to Saint Andrew’s School, Dublin, and studied medicine in Trinity College Dublin, where he enjoyed the social life, theatre and rugby. He captained Trinity to the Leinster Senior Cup (1908), also played for Wanderers, and played on the Hospitals’ Cup winning team in the 1903-1904 and 1904-1905 seasons. He became the first Jew to play Test rugby when, on 8 February 1908, he lined up as Ireland’s number 8 in a 13-3 defeat by England at the Richmond Athletic Ground. In all, he won ten caps for Ireland (1908-1910).

In The Oval World: A Global History of Rugby' by Tony Collins, an account is given of Solomons taking a taxi to ensure he would be in time to run on to the pitch for a rugby international: ‘Fearing he would be late for Ireland’s 1909 home match against England, he hailed a cab in the centre of Dublin. He told the cabbie he wanted to go to Lansdowne Road. “It’s for the Ireland rugby international” explained Solomons. “Ireland?” snorted the driver dismissively “it’s nothing but fourteen Prods and a Jew”.’

Ireland were defeated 11-5 by England that day, 13 February 1909.

The stadium at Lansdowne Road, the home ground of Ireland and of Wanderers … Bethel Solomons was capped ten times for Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

He acted at the Abbey Theatre, under the stage name Thomas Thornhill, in 1913 in August Strindberg’s There are Crimes and Crimes, and James Stephens dedicated The Charwoman’s Daughter to him.

Although his rugby and theatrical ambitions were limited by the demands and successful medical career, he went on to become a selector for the Irish team and was vice-president of the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) in later years.

After his experience as an extern maternity assistant at the Rotunda Hospital, attending home births in the Dublin slums, he became devoted to obstetrics and gynaecology, also studied in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden and Munich, and started to teach medical students.

Bethel Solomons was a supporter of the suffrage movement and an advocate of women’s equality. He opened the Jewish Medical Dispensary in Stamer Street in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ in 1913 and ran it with Ada Shillman, a midwife who attended most of the Jewish women in Dublin during her career.

He married Gertrude Levy in 1916 at the Liberal Synagogue in London in a wedding conducted by Claude Montefiore. Gertrude was a friend of his sister Sophie since they were students at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Gertrude and Bethel lived in 42 Fitzwilliam Square, where he ran a successful practice (1916-1926). His patients included George Yeats and Iseult Gonne, and they later rented the upstairs of 42 Fitzwilliam Square to WB Yeats and his wife George. He later practiced from 30 Lower Baggot Street.

Bethel Solomons was the Master of the Rotunda Hospital from 1926 to 1933, and as Master he is mentioned by James Joyce in Finnegans Wake: ‘in my bethel of Solyman’s I accouched my rotundaties.’

He inherited considerable financial challenges at a hospital that needed to modernise and to maintain its reputation as one of the world’s leading maternity hospitals. His improvements included a new nurses’ home, new out-patient department, theatre block and sick babies ward, the introduction of X-ray facilities and incubators and a revival of the pathology laboratory.

As World War II approached, Solomons took an increased role in Jewish affairs. He wrote to the British Medical Journal in 1937 warning against the choice of Berlin as the location for an international medical academy of postgraduate work and research to ‘further international fellowship and friendship’.

The Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation on Leicester Avenue, Rathgar (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

From 1939, he worked to raise funds for the Jewish Refugee Aid Committee, which was chaired by Leonard Abrahamson and had among its vice-chairs, his brother Edwin, who was the President of the Dublin Hebrew Congregation at Adelaide Road Synagogue. At the end of the war, he became chair of the Jewish Children’s Refugee fund, raising funds to bring refugee children to Clonyn Castle, Co Westmeath or to Millisle Farm in Northern Ireland.

Solomons chaired a meeting in the Mansion House in Dublin in 1946 addressed by Rabbi Israel Mattuck of the Liberal Synagogue in London. The meeting led to the formation of the Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation (DJPC), with Bethel Solomons as president from 1946 to 1965. The former Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Yitzhak Herzog (1888-1959), by then the Chief Rabbi of the Holy Land, denounced the new synagogue as an ‘open, active, organised rebellion against the Torah’, but Bethel Solomons refuted this in the Jewish Chronicle in 1946.

Solomons received many international honours and was President of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in 1946-1949. He died on 11 September 1965 at his home, Laughton Beg, Rochestown Avenue, Dún Laoghaire. Bethel and Gertrude Solomons were the parents of three children. Their second son, Dr Michael Solomons (1919-2007) was a distinguished gynaecologist, a pioneer of family planning in Ireland, and a veteran of the bitter and divisive 1983 constitutional amendment referendum campaign.

Another Irish rugby international, Tony Ward, found out late in life that his father, Danny Ward, was from a Jewish family that fled Poland to escape Nazi persecution. In a peculiar accident or coincidence in history, his paternal ancestors too had Solomons as their original family name.

Tony Ward was only five years old when his father died, leaving him with ‘precious few early memories of him’ so that he ‘knew very little about him or his family.’ It was only in later life he discovered his father’s story as a Jewish refugee from Poland later, partly through research initiated by his daughters, Nikki and Lynn, as a Christmas present. Through a professional genealogical agency, Ancestry Made Easy, they came across findings he had never known for the best part of six decades.

His father, known as Danny Ward, was born Saul Solomons on 16 August 1909. The Solomons family were victims of their time, and following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, they fled the persecution of Jews in Russia, Poland and Finland.

Harris Solomons and Jane Cohen were the parents of Saul (Danny). Harris was a tailor and he and Jane lived at Great Garden Street, Whitechapel, in the East End of London. Saul Solomons, or Danny Ward, had three siblings: Sadie, Sydney and another sister, Sarah, who died soon after birth. The three surviving children were all born in London, but the census return listed them as Russians.

Saul Solomons and Lily Gross were married in Philpot Street Synagogue in the East End in 1934. They both worked in London as hairdressers and their son Derek, who was born in 1935, is Tony Ward’s half-brother.

That first marriage was later dissolved, and Saul Solomons then moved to Ireland and settled in Dublin in the late 1940s. He met June Connolly, a Catholic, around 1952 and there was an 18-year age gap between them. Gor them to marry, he reportedly had to give up his Jewish religion. By late November 1953, he had changed his name from Saul Solomons to Daniel Ward, had become a Catholic, and they married in Cardiff Registry Office.

The couple lived for a time in Leeds, where Tony Ward was born. Danny Ward had a heart attack and died in Leeds General Infirmary on Saint Patrick’s Day, 17 March 1960. Tony was only five, and June returned to Dublin almost immediately. Yet, having spent part of his childhood in Leeds, Tony Ward is still a committed Leeds United supporter.

There are other Jewish sports figures who have played cricket and football for Ireland, including Louis ‘Abraham’ Bookman and Finn Isaac Azaz. But more about them, perhaps, on another and appropriate Friday evening.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

Dr Bethel Solons was the Master of the Rotunda Hospital, an actor at the Abbey Theatre, President of the Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation, and was capped then times for Ireland in international rugby

Fading memories of the Morris assembly works at the former Brittain motors site in Rathmines

The former Brittain Motors site on Lower Rathmines, included flanking ‘In’ and ‘Out’ wings designed by Arnold Francis Hendy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

My childhood memories are patchy and are not connected in any sort of ‘joined-up writing’. What I think are memories from infancy may, in fact, be founded on the few photographs I have from those early years, with either the photographs providing the memories or the memories being based on the images in those old photographs.

These few black-and-out photographs are over 70 years old, and most of them show me in the small garden in front of my grandmother’s farmhouse at Moonwee, near Cappoquin in west Waterford, or an unknown beach. In all these photographs I am with my foster-mother Peggy Kerr, the dogs that were family pets but that also worked on the farm, and the family car, an old black Morris Minor ZL 5776, made in 1949.

I thought of that old Morris Minor and wondered about those photographs and memories during my visit to Dublin last week as I stood outside the former Brittain Motors assembly plant on Lower Rathmines Road, beside Portobello Bridge. I was in Dublin for the launch of Salvador Ryan’s new book, Childhood and the Irish in the Royal Irish Academy the previous night. My two chapters in this book are about the Portobello and ‘Little Jerusalem’ area, so I should have expected memories of the area would come rushing back into my my mind the next monrning.

The decorated stucco Victorian house at the centre of the former Brittain Motors site in Rathmines (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Brittain Motors or GA Brittain Ltd was a car assembly plant and not just a dealership. There, during my childhood, popular models from the UK were assembled, including the Morris Minor and the Mini. It was the first company outside Britain to assemble the Morris Minor, receiving the first ‘completely knocked down’ (CKD) export kits, and production continued until 1971.

The Irish-assembled cars sometimes used a different paint palette than their UK counterparts, and the locally popular colours included dark brown.

These cars were built at the Morris Minor and Mini plant in Oxford, and then taken to production locations across Europe, including Slovenia, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as the assembly site at Portobello in Dublin. In addition, there was a service facility in Ringsend, close to what is now the Aviva Stadium.

When the Mini was launched in 1959, it was an overnight success in Ireland. But before the car could be sold in the Republic, all the component parts had to be packed in wooden crates in the UK, shipped to the Port of Dublin, and then assembled by the Brittain Group in Dublin.

I remember watching the assembled cars being lined up on Rathmines Road as I walked to parent’s home in Harold’s Cross from school, enthralled not only by their appearance but by the Brittain Motors building, with its ‘In’ and ‘Out’ lettering over the entrance and exit gates, bookending a splendid decorated stucco house.

A faded sign is a reminder that the house was once known as Grand Canal House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

I was young and naïve and at the age of eight or nine, in 1960 or 1961, all I hoped and wished Santa would leave for me under the tree for Christmas was a model yellow Mini. That Christmas night, I crept downstairs in the middle of the night to find it and to play with it in the silence between Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. But from his bedroom above, my father could see the light I had switched on, casting its beams on the front garden. In his characteristic anger, he rushed down, promptly confiscated it, never to be seen again.

But the petty, almost vindictive, attitudes of an adult parent to a playful young boy failed to dull my fascination with the Morris assembly plant at Brittain’s premises on Lower Rathmines Road until I was sent away to boarding school in the mid-1960s.

Soon after, the Brittain Group and their rivals Lincoln and Nolan Ltd – who also assembled the Mini at New Wapping Street in East Wall – amalgamated in 1967 or 1968 and became the BLN Motor Company, moving to the Naas Road on the west side of Dublin. The company was then bought by the Smith Group which assembled Renault cars in Wexford. Following the BLN merger, the Mini assembly franchise went to Reg Armstrong Motors in Ringsend.

As I stood last week looking at the former Brittain works on Lower Rathmines Road, near Portobello Bridge, those memories from 60 years or more ago came back as though it had all been only last year.

The 1930 parts of the Brittain site was designed by the Dublin-based architect Arnold Francis Hendy (1894-1958) of Kaye-Parry & Ross and were built by H&J Martin, founded in 1840, whose great buildings include the Grand Opera House, Belfast (1895), he Slieve Donard Hotel (1898), and Belfast City Hall in 1898.

Hendy was born in Plymouth and after World War I in Palestine and France with the Devonshire Regiment, he moved to Dublin and trained as an architect with WH Byrne & Son. As a student of the RIAI, he won the Downes Bronze Medal in 1920-1921 and the Institute Prize in 1921-1922. He joined Kaye-Parry & Ross in 1924 and soon became a partner.

After George Murray Ross died in 1927 and William Kaye-Parry died in 1932, Hendy carried on the practice under the same name until he died in 1958. His works include the Church of Our Lady of the Wayside, Kilternan (1929), the Pembroke Library (1929), Ballsbridge, No 35-36 Westmoreland Street (1935), on the corner with Fleet Street, for the Pearl Assurance Co (1935), Archer’s Garage (1948) on Fenian Street, the Top Hat ballroom (1953) in Dun Laoghaire, and a number of housing estates in Dublin.

Hendy died in 1958 and his firm continued as Kaye-Parry, Ross & Hendy until ca 1965, and then as Kaye-Parry & Partners until the early 1970s.

Many stucco details remain on the original 19th century house (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The central, decorated stucco house between Hendy’s ‘In’ and ‘Out’ wings of the former Brittain premises retains its charm and Victorian details. But so far I have been unable to find out who was its original architect.

The building is a fine, late 19th century, two storey over basement, five-bay building, with many remaining architectural features, both externally and internally. It appears to have been originally built as office accommodation for the adjoining works, which were originally a building contractors before becoming Brittain Motors.

Faded lettering on a decorative shield above the door indicates the house was once known as Grand Canal House. In the post-Brittain years, it became the offices of Liam Carroll (1950-2021) Zoe Developments, one of the biggest builders of residential properties in the 1990s, and was known as La Touche House, an acknowledgement that the real, official name of Portobello Bridge nearby is La Touche Bridge, built in 1791.

Nearby Portobello Bridge was built as La Touche Bridge in 1791 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Before he went bankrupt, Carroll was described by Kathy Sherridan in The Irish Times as ‘a billionaire developer who flies Ryanair and writes his own cheques’. He was regarded as ‘a maverick, a reclusive puzzle wrapped in an enigma’.

There were proposals in 2017 to turn Grand Canal House into an eight-bedroom annexe for the nearby Portobello Hotel, on the other side of the bridge on Richmond Street. It now seems to be used for sheltered housing, while other parts of the Brittain site include a café, solicitor’s offices, apartments and what appears to be sheltered housing.

Sadly, the ‘Out’ lettering is now missing from Hendy’s paired ‘In’ and ‘Out’ windows.

The fall of Liam Carroll and the sale of his property portfolios by NAMA are among the many fading memories of the ‘Celtic Tiger’. My memories of the Brittain assembly site and that dinky Mini Minor or Austin 7 one of Christmas in the early 1960s could easily have become another offering for Salvador Ryain’s Childhood and the Irish. Meanwhile, I’d still like to find out more about the architect and the history of the former Grand Canal House, at the centre of the former Brittain site on Lower Rathmines Road.

With ZL 5776 outside my grandmother’s house in Cappoquin, Co Waterford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford collection)

Four boys growing up in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ and a synagogue fire

The former synagogue on Lennox Street in Little Jerusalem, Dublin … four children almost set it on fire 100 years ago in 1925 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

As a boy in Dublin, Clanbrassil Street and the labyrinth of streets leading off it offered a certain mystique and intrigue that stirred my youthful imagination. The area between Leonard’s Corner and Kelly’s Corner, and the streets nearby, was still known as ‘Little Jerusalem,’ and was still the heart of Dublin’s Jewish community in the 1950s and into the 1960s.

Although the drift to the southern suburbs of Terenure, Rathfarnham and Churchtown was already happening in the mid-1960s, Little Jerusalem was still an area with small kosher shops, fascia signs in mixtures of English and Hebrew lettering, and small terraced houses that included synagogues for tiny congregations even after the new synagogue opened on Rathfarnham Road, a few doors from the house where I was born.

The Levitas brothers, Max, Morry and Sol, lived on Longwood Avenue and Warren Street in Little Jerusalem Their friend Chaim Herzog lived on Bloomfield Avenue. These four boys were of my father’s generation. The Levitas brothers were the sons of Harry Levitas from the shtetl of Akmeyan in Lithuania and his wife Leah Rick from Riga in Latvia. Both parents fled the pogroms in Tsarist Russia in 1913. They met in Dublin, where both had family members, and they were married in Camden Street Synagogue in August 1914.

Harry Levitas became a prominent activist in the Amalgamated Jewish Tailors’, Machinists’ and Pressers’ Union. It was known in Dublin as ‘the Jewish Union’ and had offices in the same building as the Camden Street Synagogue, so that the house was said to have ‘Jerusalem on one floor, and the New Jerusalem on another’.

The childhood years of the Levitas brothers was marked by poverty, hardship and discrimination. From 1915 to 1927, the family lived in rooms in one house after another in Little Jerusalem: 15 Longwood Avenue (1915), 8 Warren Street (1916-1925) and one single room at 13 Saint Kevin’s Parade (1925-1927).

Max Samuel Levitas was born at 15 Longwood Avenue on 1 June 1915; his brothers, Maurice (1917-2001) and Sol (1917-2001), were born at Warren Street. Another brother Isaac, who was born at Warren Street in 1922, died as a thirteen-month-old infant in a tragic accident in the family home in March 1923. A sister Celia was born at Warren Street in 1923, and a daughter Toby was born later after the family emigrated.

During those childhood years in Little Jerusalem, the Levitas boys attended Saint Peter’s Church of Ireland National School on New Bride Street, beside the Meath Hospital. Their father struggled to earn a living, sometimes dealing in scrap metal, at other times as a travelling salesman, but more often as a tailor’s presser. But he was always an active trade unionist.

The Camden Street Synagogue closed in 1916, and the Levitas family then attended Lennox Street Synagogue, around the corner from their home on Warren Street. It was founded in 1887, and was one of the many small hebroth or shuls in the area set up by recent immigrants from Lithuania and Poland.

Late one Saturday in 1925, the synagogue almost went up in smoke. It was not, however, attempted arson. Four young boys had been anxious to bring the Sabbath to a speedy conclusion in order to go back to playing on the street. They came back into the synagogue to hastily say the final prayers, and accidentally knocked over a candle that set a cloth alight. Other versions of the incident say they knocked over a candle while trying to access the synagogue wine. Whatever the cause, the small blaze was quickly extinguished.

The four ‘culprits’ were the three Levitas brothers – Max, Maurice and Sol Levitas – and Chaim Herzog, the son of the Chief Rabbi, Dr Yitzhak Herzog. The fourth boy, Chaim Herzog (1918-1997), was born in Belfast but had moved to Dublin with his parents in 1919 and lived on Bloomfield Avenue.

Chaim Herzog later went to secondary school in Wesley College, and would become the President of Israel (1983-1993). The other three boys in the incident, the Levitas brothers, moved with their parents that year to one room in 13 Saint Kevin’s Parade. A few doors away was another small shul, the ultra-orthodox Machzikei haDas, founded at No 7 in 1883. But the Levitas family stayed there for less than two years, and eventually moved to the East End of London, where the boys would become heroes in the Battle of Cable Street.

When Harry Levitas was blacklisted by employers for his union activism, the family was forced to move to Glasgow in 1927. In 1930, they moved to Whitechapel in the East End of London, where Harry had two sisters. As teenagers in the East End, the three Levitas boys from Dublin became active in politics. At 19, Max became an East End hero when he was arrested with Jack Clifford for daubing anti-Fascist slogans on Nelson’s Column in 1934.

When Oswald Mosley tried marching through the largely Jewish East End with his blackshirts in 1936, the Levitas brothers resisted and took part in the Battle of Cable Street. By then Max was 21, working as a tailor’s presser in a small workshop in Commercial Street, but Maurice and Sol were still in their teens.

Maurice ‘Morry’ Levitas joined the Connolly Column of the International Brigade in 1937 to fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He spent eleven months in jail, where he suffered violent interrogations, arbitrary beatings, and mock executions before he was released in a prisoner exchange in 1939. During the Second World War, he served in India and Burma with the Royal Army Medical Corps. He later worked as a plumber, teacher and lecturer.

Max led a twenty-one-week rent strike in Whitechapel in 1939, and in September 1940 he led the occupation of the Savoy Hotel’s deep bomb shelters that were reserved for Savoy patrons. The protest forced the authorities to open up Underground stations as bomb shelters for the rest of World War II. Max was elected as a Communist borough councillor in Stepney in the East End in 1945, and he held his seat for a further seventeen years.

Members of the extended Levitas family suffered the fate of many Jews during the Holocaust. Their aunt Sara was burnt to death along with fellow-villagers in the synagogue of Akmeyan; their aunt Rachel was killed with her family by the Nazis in Riga; an uncle was murdered in Paris by the Gestapo.

Max and Maurice Levitas frequently returned to the Dublin of their childhood. Maurice was honoured with Spanish citizenship in 1996 and was among the surviving veterans of the International Brigade who received a civic reception in the Mansion House in 1997. He died in 2001.

Max was in Ireland for the last time in 2015 to re-visit Little Jerusalem, the houses that had been childhood homes, and the former synagogue on Lennox Street. He too received a civic reception in the Mansion House. Max celebrated his 100th birthday in Whitechapel in 2015, when he received personal greetings from President Michael D. Higgins. He died on 2 November 2018. A block of flats on Jubilee Street in Stepney was named Levitas House in 2020 in his honour.

As for the former synagogue that almost burned down 100 years ago, it closed its doors in 1974 and the congregation moved to Stratford College on Zion Road, Rathgar, where it continued to worship until 1981.

Further reading:

Nick Harris, Dublin’s Little Jerusalem (Dublin, 2002).
Cormac Ó Gráda, Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce: A Socioeconomic History (Princeton NJ and Oxford, 2006).
Manus O’Riordan, ‘Citizens of the Republic, Jewish History in Ireland,’ Dublin Review of Books, 2007, avaiable at: https://drb.ie/articles/citizens-of-the-republic-jewish-history-in-ireland/ (accessed 15 September 2025).
‘So Long, Max Levitas’, Spitalfields Life (4 November 2018), available at: https://spitalfieldslife.com/2018/11/04/so-long-max-levitas/ (accessed 15 September 2025)

The house on Bloomfield Avenue where Chaim Herzog lived as a child (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This essay was published as ‘Four Boys Growing up in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ and a Synagogue Fire’, pp 153-156, Chapter 36 in Childhood and the Irish, A miscellany, ed Salvador Ryan (Dublin: Wordwell, 2025), xviii + 344 pp, ISBN: 978-1-916742-19-2, lauched at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, last Monday (1 December 2025)

Biographical note (p 340):

Patrick Comerford is an Anglican priest and a former professor in Trinity College Dublin and the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. He lives in retirement in Milton Keynes

With Professor Salvador Ryan (editor, second from left) and some of the other contributors at the launch of ‘Childhood and the Irish, A miscellany’ in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, last Monday (1 December 2025)