Visiting Westcott House, Cambridge, is like standing on the shoulders of the theological giants of Anglicanism

Westcott House on Jesus Lane is one of the two Anglican theological colleges in Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

During this week’s walking tour of Cambridge, when I showed a visiting friend from Ireland around the Cambridge I have felt a part of for almost 20 years and that has been a part of me too, we visited a number of colleges, chapels and churches, including King’s College and Jesus College and their chapels, and Sidney Sussex College and Christ’s College.

One of the theological colleges we visited was Westcott House, the Anglican theological college on Jesus Lane in the heart of Cambridge, squeezed between Sidney Sussex College to the west and All Saints’ Church to the east, and across the street on Jesus Lane from Jesus College, as well as the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies and Wesley House.

When I stayed at Sidney Sussex College on courses organised by the IOCS, I became well acquainted with Westcott House, and I have often mused that it Westcott was the one theological college in England – or, perhaps, Ripon College Cuddesdon – I would like to have trained at had I not trained in Ireland.

I stayed in Westcott House once many years ago during a residential meeting of USPG trustees, and I have been there for chapel services and for seminars organised by the IOCS, when the lecturers have included Archbishop Rowan Williams, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware and Metropolitan John Zizioulas.

Westcott House on Jesus Lane, Cambridge, is squeezed between Sidney Sussex College and All Saints’ Church and across the street from Jesus College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Westcott House is one of two Anglican theological colleges in Cambridge, the other being Ridley Hall. Westcott stands in the Liberal Catholic tradition in Anglicanism, but the college accepts ordinands from a range of traditions in the Church of England and other Anglican churches. Its main activity is training men and women for ordained ministry in the Church of England, and it is part of the Cambridge Theological Federation.

The chapel at Westcott is at the heart of the community life. Its uncluttered simplicity provides ideal sacred space for a range of services from sung high mass to said Morning Prayer, from adoration of the Blessed Sacrament to ‘prayer and praise’ services.

As we strolled around the grounds of Westcott House, my friend and I compared notes about theological training in England and Ireland, the accommodation and facilities provided for ordinands and their families, the links theological colleges and students ought to be encouraged to have with the university, and the links the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein developed with Ireland thanks to his friendship with a former ordinand at Westcott, Maurice O’Connor (Con) Drury.

Westcott House was founded in 1881 by Brooke Foss Westcott, one of the ‘Cambridge Triumvirate’ of biblical scholars and theologians (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Westcott House was founded in 1881 as the Cambridge Clergy Training School. Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901), the then Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, was its first president, and he later became the Bishop of Durham.

Westcott was a distinguished New Testament scholar and one of the ‘Cambridge Triumvirate’ of biblical scholars and theologians, alongside Joseph Barber Lightfoot (1828-1899) and Dublin-born Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892). Together, they produced The New Testament in the Original Greek (1881), shaping modern Bible translations, and leading to the Revised Version, the Revised Standard Version and eventually the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible.

Westcott House was the result of Westcott’s passionate concern to raise the standard of clergy education and to equip clergy to meet the challenges of parish ministry. He was also exercised by the way in which the Church of England was increasingly dominated by parties and factions, and he refused to be labelled with any factional affiliations or labels.

In its history, Westcott House has said: ‘As a scholar, educator, priest and prophet, Westcott’s legacy to the Church of England challenges sectarianism, ignorance, complacency and empty faith. This is the spirit which Westcott House seeks to honour today, drawing students from all backgrounds to prepare them for ministry in this historic centre of Christian learning.’

Visiting Westcott House is an experience that could be compared to standing on the shoulders of theological giants (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

I once described staying in Westcott House as an experience that could be compared to standing on the shoulders of the theological giants of the Church of England, and even of wider Anglicanism. Today, Westcott House describes itself as ‘the home of a diverse, inclusive and international community of people who share a vision of ministry to all society’.

The Revd Dr Helen Dawes has been the principal of Westcott House since 2021. Previous principals have included Peter Walker (1962-1972), later Bishop of Ely, Mark Santer (1972-1981), later Bishop of Birmingham, and Canon Chris Chivers, who chaired the Trustees of USPG. The first Irish-born principal was William Derrick Lindsay Greer (1902-1972), later Bishop of Manchester.

The boot scarpers at the entrance, depicting a rabbit and a pig, are a heraldic pun on the surname of Bertram Cunningham (1871-1944), who was the principal in 1919-1943.

Notable staff members have included Earl (Gregory) Collins, formerly of Glenstal Abbey and Abbot of the Dormition Abbey, Jerusalem, author of the Glenstal Book of Icons, and now Canon Chancellor of Chichester Cathedral; Canon John Collins and Dean Alan Webster, later of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London; Don Cupitt, later Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; John Habgood, later Archbishop of York; Hugh Montefiore, later Bishop of Birmingham; Mary Tanner, later European President of the World Council of Churches; Canon Angela Tilby; and two former Archbishops of Canterbury, Robert Runcie and Rowan Williams.

Notable alumni include: the Revd Professor John Polkinghorne (1930-2021), theoretical physicist and theologian, who wrote extensively on quantum physics and theology; John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich and author of Honest to God; Mervyn Stockwood, Bishop of Southwark; and Graham Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford until 2024.

The chapel is at the heart of daily life in Westcott House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Dr Maurice O’Connor (Con) Drury (1907-1976), who left Westcott House after a year as an ordinand, was an Irish psychiatrist, is known for his accounts of his conversations and close friendship with the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. He studied philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge, where his tutors included Wittgenstein. Drury and Wittgenstein remained close friend and Drury was among a group of friends present at Wittgenstein’s deathbed in 1951.

After leaving Westcott House, Con Drury studied medicine in Trinity College Dublin, thanks to financial assistance from Wittgenstein and friends, including the economist John Maynard Keynes. He took part in the Normandy landings, and later was the resident psychiatrist at Saint Patrick’s Hospital, Dublin, and a lecturer in TCD and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

His son, Dr Luke Drury, an astrophysicist, was elected president of the Royal Irish Academy in 2011. Another son, Paul Drury, who died in 2015, edited The Star, Evening Herald, Irish Daily Mail and Ireland on Sunday, and was also deputy editor of the Irish Independent.
Con Drury’s papers are held in the library of Mary Immaculate College, Limerick.

The architects of Westcott House included Temple Lushington Moore, who was born in Tullamore, Co Offaly (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Westcott House is now Grade II listed, and visually it can look like the cloisters of All Saints’ Church, which is adjacent and was designed by George Frederick Bodley (1827-1907).

The main buildings were built in 1899-1929 around an attractive Tudor-style courtyard. The north range was designed in 1899 by the architectural practice of GE Grayson (1834-1912) and Edward Ould (1852-1909), the west range in 1912 by Hartwell Simpson, the east range and south part in 1914 by the Tullamore-born architect Temple Lushington Moore (1856-1920). Temple Moore was also the architect of Pusey House, Oxford; his only son, Richard Temple Moore (1891-1918), was killed when the RMS Leinster was torpedoed and sunk off Dublin a mere month before the end of World War I.

Temple Moore has been described as ‘England’s leading ecclesiastical architect from the mid-Edwardian years’. The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner said that he was ‘always sensitive in his designs and often interesting.’ His designs reflect his Anglo-Catholic practice and values. His work can be seen across England; he is known for a series of fine Gothic Revival churches built about 1890 and 1917 and he also restored many churches and designed church fittings.

The chapel and other buildings at Westcott House were designed in 1923-1929 by the architect Percy Richard Morley Horder (1870-1944), who also worked on Chapel Court in Jesus College and designed the Jesus College boathouse (1932).

Westcott House is in an idyllic college setting in the heart of Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Since the 1985 report Faith in the City, Westcott House has retained a commitment to develop expertise and capacity in the fields of urban ministry and mission.

Through a partnership with the Diocese of Manchester, the college has pioneered patterns of context-based learning and innovative approaches to contextual theology for over twenty years. These approaches have been widely imitated and developed by other theological education institutions. The college has also developed a programme for continuing ministerial development through the Westcott Foundation.

The college provides training pathways in conjunction with the University of Cambridge and the Common Awards, validated by Durham University, as well as opportunities for independent study for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees through the wider Cambridge Theological Federation and Anglia Ruskin University.

Today, Westcott House is a collection of beautiful buildings overlooking the gardens of Old Court, and it offers a peaceful and idyllic college setting in the heart of Cambridge.

The boot scrapers at the main entrance to Westcott House, in the shape of a rabbit and a pig, are heraldic puns on the name of Bertram Cunningham (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The children of the Holocaust who called Ireland home

Dublin’s first Stolpersteine or ‘stumbling stones’, recalling six Irish Holocaust victims, outside St Catherine’s National School on Donore Avenue (photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

A series of memorials in a variety of languages in Auschwitz and Birkenau commemorate the victims of the Holocaust who were murdered in the two concentration camps. Over twenty languages appear on separate plaques, representing the languages and nationalities of the victims. Although there is no plaque in Irish, it would be wrong to think that the Holocaust was something that did not affect Ireland, and I was chilled by one exhibit in Auschwitz that shows how the Nazi plan to exterminate 11 million Jews in Europe included 4,000 Jews in Ireland.

When I was growing up, the area close to Donore Avenue was still Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’. When I was about eleven or twelve, friends introduced me to a schoolboys’ soccer club called Port Vale. The clubhouse was in the Donore Avenue area, but home games were played in Bushy Park in Terenure. Later, at sixteen, I had a school summer holiday placement on Donore Avenue, working as a copyholder or proofreader’s assistant at Irish Printers. Dolphin’s Barn Synagogue was around the corner on the South Circular Road, though it finally closed in 1984.

So, I was moved when the first Stolpersteine or ‘stumbling stones’ in Dublin were put in place in 2022 outside Saint Catherine’s Church of Ireland National School on Donore Avenue. The ‘Stumbling Stones’ by the German artist Gunter Demnig are memorials to victims of the Nazis, including Jews, homosexuals, Romani and the disabled. His project has spread across Europe, with more than 90,000 Stolpersteine in 1,000 or more cities in almost thirty countries.

The six stones on Donore Avenue commemorate six victims of the Holocaust, including four who were born in Dublin or spent their childhood in the city: Ettie Steinberg Gluck, who grew up in Dublin, her husband Wojteck Gluck, and their baby son Leon; and Isaac Shishi, Ephraim Saks and his sister Jeanne (Lena) Saks.

Esther or Ettie Steinberg was one of seven children of Aaron Hirsh Steinberg and his wife Bertha Roth. Ettie was born in the former Czechoslovakia in 1914 and her family moved to Dublin in 1925 when she was 11. The family lived at 28 Raymond Terrace, off South Circular Road, and the children went to school at Saint Catherine’s on Donore Avenue.

Ettie married Vogtjeck Gluck, originally from Belgium, in the Greenville Hall Synagogue on South Circular Road on 22 July 1937. She was twenty-two, he was twenty-four, and they later moved to Antwerp. As the Second World War was looming, they moved to Paris, where their son Leon was born on 28 March 1939. By 1942, they were living in an hotel in Toulouse.

When the Vichy regime began rounding up Jews in southern France, Ettie’s family back in Dublin secured visas that allowed them to travel to Northern Ireland. But when the visas arrived in Toulouse, it was too late: Ettie, Vogtjeck and Leon had been arrested the day before. As they were being transported to the death camps, Ettie wrote a final postcard to her family and threw it out a train window. A passer-by found it and eventually it reached Dublin. Ettie, her husband and their son were taken first to Drancy, a transit camp outside Paris. They were then deported on 2 September 1942 and arrived in Auschwitz two days later. It is assumed they were murdered immediately.

Isaac Shishi, whose family came to Ireland from Lithuania, was bon Isaac Seesee born on 29 January 1891 in the family home at 36 St Alban’s Road, off South Circular Road, and spent his childhood there. He was murdered along with his wife Chana and their daughter Sheine by the Nazis in Vieksniai in Lithuania in 1941.

Ephraim Saks was born Ephraim Jackson on 19 April 1915 in Greenville House on South Circular Road, later the site of the Greenville Hall synagogue. His sister Jeanne (Lena) Saks was born on 2 February 1918. They too spent their childhood on St Alban’s Road. The family remained in Dublin throughout the First World War, but then moved to Antwerp. Ephraim was arrested in Paris in 1939 and was murdered in Auschwitz on 24 August 1942. Lena was taken captive in Antwerp and was murdered in Auschwits in 1942 or 1943. Their brother Jakob, who was born in Leeds in 1906, also spent his childhood in Dublin; he too perished in the Holocaust.

Many Holocaust refugees and survivors came as children to live in Ireland. Tomi Reichental, who was born in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 1935 and Suzi Diamond, who was born near Debrecen in Hungary in 1942, have both addressed Holocaust Memorial Day services in Dublin.

Geoffrey (Günther) Phillips was born in Germany in 1925, and was 13 when he escaped on the Kindertransports to England in 1938. He moved to Ireland in 1951 with his wife Phyllis (Moore) and their three sons. He set up a textiles factory in Dublin, and died in 2011.

Rosel Siev was twelve when Hitler came to power. She escaped from Germany to England, but almost all her family died in the Holocaust. When she was a widow, Rosel married a widowed Irish solicitor, Stanley Siev, and they lived in Rathgar, Dublin, until 2012 when they moved to Manchester. Stanley died in 2014. Rosel’s sister Laura was saved by Oskar Schindler and is included on the scroll of names at the end of the film Schindler’s List.

Inge Radford (1936-2016), who was born in Vienna, escaped to England on the Kindertransports in 1939 at the age of three, and later moved to Belfast. Her widowed mother and five of her brothers were murdered in the Holocaust. Inge was a social worker, a probation officer, and worked in the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast. Her husband, Professor Colin Buchanan Radford, was dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Queen’s University of Belfast. Inge lived in Northern Ireland until she died in 2016.

Edith Zinn-Collis was brought to Ireland as a child in 1946 with her brother Zoltan by Dr Bob Collis. She lived in Wicklow and died in 2012. Her brother, Zoltan Zinn-Collis was born around 1940 in Czechoslovakia and was sent to Ravensbruck and Bergen Belsen with his sister and brothers. He died in 2012.

Doris Segal was born Dorathea (Dorli) Klepperova in Czechoslovakia in 1932 and escaped to Ireland with her parents in 1939 when she was seven. She later lived in Dublin and married Jack Segal in 1958. They lived in Terenure and she died in 2018.

Jan Kaminski was born in Poland in 1932. At the age of ten, he escaped a round-up of local Jews, fled into the forests and spent the war on the run. He survived but his entire family perished. He lived most of his life in Dublin and died in 2019.

Dr Ernst Scheyer (1890-1958) brought his son and daughter to Dublin from Germany in the late 1930s. He was rounded up after Krtistallnacht and spent almost a month in Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp near Berlin. He arrived in Dublin on 14 January 1939, and the Scheyer family made their home at 67 Kenilworth Square. He later taught German at Saint Columba’s College, Rathfarnham, and in Trinity College Dublin.

His daughter Renate married another refugee, Robert Weil (1924-1989), in 1948. It was the first wedding in the newly-established Progressive Jewish Synagogue in Dublin. Robert Weil had arrived in Ireland in 1939 as a young Jewish refugee. He went to school at Newtown in Waterford, studied at TCD, and became a teacher of modern languages, especially German, in Belfast.

The Holocaust touched every family in Europe. We should remember that there was a hardly a family that did not lose cousins, neighbours, friends, work colleagues or school friends.

Detail on one of the stumbling stones (photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Sources and further reading:

‘Ireland and the Holocaust’, Holocaust Education Ireland, available at https://www.holocausteducationireland.org/ireland-and-the-holocaust (accessed 1 June 2025).

‘Stumbling stones’ in memory of Irish Holocaust victims unveiled, RTÉ News, 1 June 2022, available at https://www.rte.ie/news/2022/0601/1302393-stumbling-stones/ (accessed 1 June 2025)

Ronan McGreevy, Bryan O’Brien, ‘Stumbling stones’ unveiled in Dublin to remember Irish Holocaust victims, The Irish Times, 1 June 2022 , available at: https://www.irishtimes.com/history/2022/06/01/stumbling-stones-unveiled-in-dublin-to-remember-irish-holocaust-victims/ (accessed 1 June 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

This essay was published as ‘The children of the Holocaust who called Ireland home, pp 166-170, Chapter 39 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, earlier this month week (1 December 2025)

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 week (1 December 2025)

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)

Daily prayer in Advent 2025: 3, Tuesday 2 December 2025

‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!’ (Luke 10: 23) … street art in Camden Street, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The Season of Advent – and the real countdown to Christmas – began on Sunday with the First Sunday of Advent (30 November 2025).

I have stayed in Dublin overnight after last night’s launch of Childhood and the Irish, a new book edited my friend and colleague, Professor Salvador Ryan of Maynooth, in the Royal Irish Academy. I am catching a flight back to Birmingham later this afternoon. But, before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, 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.

‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!’ (Luke 10: 23) … what do we see in our own eyes?

Luke 10: 21-24 (NRSVA):

21 At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 22 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’

23 Then turning to the disciples, Jesus said to them privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! 24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.’

‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!’ (Luke 10: 23) … street art in Plaza de Judería in Malaga (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s reflection:

In the Gospel reading provided in the lectionary at the Eucharist today (Luke 10: 21-24), Jesus tells his disciples: ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it’ (verse 23-24).

At 73, my sight and my hearing may not quite be what they once were. But my distant ‘cousin’, the late Kevin Martin, who died two years ago (14 June 2023), would greet me on my birthdays with the traditional Jewish greeting of ‘ad meah v’esrim’, ‘may you live until 120!’ (עד מאה ועשרים שנה‎).

Deuteronomy recalls that Moses lived to be 120, at which age ‘his eye had not dimmed, and his vigour had not diminished’ (Deuteronomy 34: 7). Great rabbis of the Talmud, including Hillel, Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi, all lived to 120 as well.

The traditional Jewish birthday blessing carries the implication that the receiver should retain full mental and physical faculties to the end of life, still able to see with ears and to hear with ears.

This short overnight visit to Dublin has brought back many places where I have lived, worked or studied over the years. But Advent is a time of looking forward rather than back.

With those implications, of my eyes not being dimmed, and my vigour not being diminished, living for many more years does not sound so dim or distant a prospect at all. Indeed, despite a stroke, sarcoidosis and B12 deficiency, it might even be a real blessing, not only with what I have seen and heard in life but with the love, care and attention I receive too.

‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!’ (Luke 10: 23) … street art in Brick Lane in the East End, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 2 December 2025):

The theme this week (30 to 6 December 2025) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The Kingdom is for All’ (pp 6-7). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from the Revd Magela, Vicar of Cristo Redentor Parish in Tocantins, Brazil and coordinator of Casa A+, a place of hope and healing for people living with HIV.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 2 December 2025) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for justice in public health, so that HIV/AIDS care and treatment reach all people in vulnerable situations, and so that vital medicines are accessible and free of charge to those who need them.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and to put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
that on the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

O Lord our God,
make us watchful and keep us faithful
as we await the coming of your Son our Lord;
that, when he shall appear,
he may not find us sleeping in sin
but active in his service
and joyful in his praise;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Almighty God,
as your kingdom dawns,
turn us from the darkness of sin
to the light of holiness,
that we may be ready to meet you
in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!’ (Luke 10: 23) … street art in Camden Place, between Camden Street and Harcourt Street, Dublin (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

My story of Chaim Herzog and the Levitas brothers has become a topical tale at this evening’s book launch in Dublin

The plaque unveiled by Chaim Herzog in Herzog Park, Rathgar … his Dublin childhood is recalled in one of my essays in ‘Christmas and the Irish’ edited by Professor Salvador Ryan and launched in the RIA this evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I am in Dublin this evening for the launch of Professor Salvador Ryan’s new book, Childhood and the Irish, A Miscellany in the Royal Irish Academy. The book, which is being launched by RTÉ’s Miriam O’Callaghan, is published by Wordwell Books and includes two contributions from me.

One of my essays is topical this evening in a way that I never expected it to be when I was subitting my contributions to this new book. ‘In Four boys growing up in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ and a synagogue fire’, I tell the story of how a youthful Chaim Herzog, who lived on Bloomfield Avenue, and three Levitas brothers, Max, Morry and Sol, who lived on Warren Street, all of my father’s generation, almost set fire accidentally to Lennox Street Synagogue late one Saturday 100 years ago, back in 1925.

Chaim Herzog (1918-1997), was born in Belfast but had moved to Dublin in 1919 when his father, Dr Yitzhak Herzog, became the first Chief Rabbi of Ireland. He later went to school in Wesley College, Dublin, and would become the President of Israel (1983-1993). Herzog Park in Dublin was named in his honour during one of his return visits to Dublin. He had fought against the Nazis in World War II, took part in the liberation of several Nazi concentration camps, including Bergen-Belsen, and became involved in left-wing politics as a member of the Labour Party. His son Isaac Herzog is a former leader of the Israeli Labour Party and is the present President of Israel.

The other three boys in the incident, the Levitas brothers, eventually moved to the East End of London, where they became heroes in the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 and the Spanish Civil War.

The councillors who wanted to change the name of Herzog Park at a meeting of Dublin City Council this evening, at the same time as this book is being launched, would do well to remember the true grit of these true Dubs who resisted racism and fascism all this lives. Many of them, however, continue to revere the statue in Fairview Park of the Nazi collaborator Sean Russell.

With Professor Salvador Ryan at a previous book launch in the Royal Irish Academy, Dawson Street, Dublin

The new book being launched this evening includes 80 essays from historians, folklorists, archaeologists, theologians, anthropologists, poets, novelists, artists, literature scholars and educationalists, who cast light on the lived experience of children in Ireland.

The contributions range from the scholarly to the deeply personal, with vignettes from almost every county in Ireland. This anthology offers an invaluable resource for all who are interested in the social, cultural and religious history of childhood in Ireland.

The topics include: childhood in early Irish saints’ lives; childhood in medieval Irish literature; remembering the children who died violently during the upheavals of 17th century Ireland; ‘foundlings’ and parish-based care for children in the 19th century; child prisoners; a New York Irish ‘street boy’ in the American Civil War; children and the belief in ‘changelings’; childhood disability; why Manchester City might be considered ‘Monaghan’s best youth club’; the educational experiences of Jewish children and of the children of RIC officers in early 20th century Ireland; the childhood of James Joyce; seasonal migration and childhood farm labour; the origins of the summer Gaeltacht course; the ‘sweet-shop’ culture of Irish childhood; the banbhs who went to the ball in 1930s Offaly; mid-20th century school strike; a Dublin school tour to Lourdes in 1954; childhood among the Travelling community; the evolution of First Communion rituals; a UK-based scholar’s childhood experience of learning different histories in Belfast and Dublin schools; blended family culture in contemporary Ireland; and many more.

Salvador Ryan is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Saint Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth, with an interest in religious and cultural history from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. This is the ninth book I have contributed to that he has either edited or co-edited.

Those other books include Christmas and the Irish (2023), Birth and the Irish (2021), Marriage and the Irish (2019), and Death and the Irish (2016), all from Wordwell Books; We Remember Maynooth: a College across Four Centuries (Dublin: Messenger Publications, 2020); The Cultural Reception of the Bible: explorations in theology, literature and the arts (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2018); Treasures of Ireland, Vol III, To the Ends of the Earth (Dublin: Veritas, 2015); and Tresures of Irish Christianity, Volume II, A People of the Word (Dublin: Veritas, 2013).

He is also the editor of The Irish Theological Quarterly, to which I have contributed often, and the editor of Under Crimblin Hill, Journal of the Dunkerrin Parish History Society – I have contributed a paper to the latest volume (2026), which was launched in the Barack Obama Plaza in Moneygall last Friday night.

Among my friends, Facebook friends, and academic and clerical colleagues who are included in this new collection are Ian d’Alton, Anne Marie D’Arcy, Séamus Dooley, Crawford Gribben, Kevin Hargaden, Mark Humphries, Laurence Kirkpatrick, Michelle McGoff-McCann, Patsy McGarry, Ida Milne, Miriam Moffitt, Father Colmán Ó Clabaigh OSB, Thomas O’Loughlin, Pádraig Ó Macháin, Clodagh Tait, Natalie Wynn, and, of course, Salvador Ryan.

In ‘Within the Sound of Church Bells’, my childhood neighbour, the writer, songwriter and broadcaster Max McCoubrey, recalls many details of childhood in Dublin 6 that resonate with me.

My contributions to this book are ‘36. Four Boys Growing up in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ (pp 153-156) and a Synagogue Fire’, and ‘39. The Children of the Holocaust who Called Ireland Home’ (pp 166-170).

I have read through some of the other essays and contributions and browsed through others at the proof-reading stages, and I am looking forward to reading many more after this evening's book lauch. But, more about this book and my two essays in the days or weeks to come. The book is out in time to include on your Christmas presents list.

• Childhood and the Irish, A Miscellany (Dublin: Wordwell Books, 2025), ISBN: 9781916742192 (paperback), xviii + 344 pp, €25. See www.wordwellbooks.com

Daily prayer in Advent 2025: 1, Sunday 30 November 2025, Advent Sunday

If you had to squeeze onto a small boat, what essentials would you take with you? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The Season of Advent begins today, the First Sunday of Advent (Sunday 30 November 2025), and this also marks the beginning of the Church Year. Later this morning, I hope to be part of the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford.

But, before the day begins, before breakfast, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, 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.

What are the essential items you pack for a journey? … bags packed at the end of a USPG conference in High Leigh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 24: 36-44 (NRSVA):

36 [Jesus said:] ‘But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, 39 and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41 Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. 42 Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.’

Lighting the first candle on the Advent Wreath in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

The First Sunday of Advent reminds us of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, our fathers and mothers or ancestors in the community or family of faith, a reminder that is repeated when we light the first candle on the Advent Wreath in our churches this morning.

Often these were people who were on the move in times of trouble, upheaval and of danger. Think of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah – often on the move, facing long journeys, but always journeying with God.

It is worth asking: ‘If a fire broke out in your house, what three possessions would you grab?’ Many priest colleagues have asked this question as they prepared their sermons on this morning’s Gospel (Matthew 24: 36-44), and the answers they get are interesting.

People include their laptops, their family photographs, their phones, their keys, their wallets or purses, cash or money, plastic cards, passports ... the family pet?

What would you take?

If you were forced to leave your home, or found yourself suddenly forced to abandon all that gives you security, would they really be worth taking?

Laptops are easily damaged, phones need to be charged and don’t always work in other countries, keys to an abandoned home no longer have any use, photographs fade, cash or money from an unstable country quickly loses value.

What would you take with you?

What do we cling to?

Anyone with an interest in old banknotes knows how it became meaningless to be a millionaire or even a multimillionaire in Weimar Germany, war-time Greece or Ceausescu’s Romania. They were in circulation at times when inflation became rampant in times of crisis in Europe. Had they been spent at the time they were issued they might have bought something of value. Had they been given away in their day, they might have helped the poor and the hungry.

But circumstances saw to it that those who became attached to their wealth on paper would lose all they had. Today’s Gospel reading challenges us to think again about what we cling to and what are our true values.

When our prosperity and wealth disappear, like the fast-fading value of old banknotes, are we in danger of feeling abandoned by God?

How would we grab our faith and take it with us if we rushed to escape a crisis?

What do you take with you on a journey?

Christ reminds those who are listening of the story of Noah. What Noah took with him on the ark is a reminder not only to anticipate our own future and our own needs to ensure that security, but to think of the needs of all life, of all creation.

Seasoned travellers know how to pack their bags.

What are the essential items you pack in your case?

Is it a small bag for an overhead cabin on a budget airline flight and a short overnight stay?

Or is it a large suitcase or two for a two-week holiday, filled with towels, sun cream and swimwear?

The list of essentials grows longer and longer as we think about it: passport, toothbrush, plastic cards, phone chargers, presents for hosts and friends, and changes of clothes and sandals, laptop, more than enough reading … so much more than we ever need or use.

Do you then regret having packed too much when you find there is not enough room for them on the way back because of restrictions on overhead bags?

I was supposed to be in Dublin this day two years ago (30 November 2023) for the launch of a new book, Christmas and the Irish: a miscellany, edited by my friend and colleague, Professor Salvador Ryan of Maynooth. I was at Luton Airport that morning when I realised I had left my passport back in Stony Stratford, buy by then it was too late to return to retrieve it. I missed my flight, I lost my hotel booking, and I missed the book launch, all because I had failed to take one essential travel item with me on the journey.

What do you think Mary and Joseph took with them for the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem?

Did they have essential and appropriate travelling papers?

Did they have enough cash to cope once they found there was no room for them in the inn?

Did they have enough with them when they made the next journey, from Bethlehem to Egypt?

Who helped them to find the missing necessities in Bethlehem, or in Egypt?

Mass migration is a major problem in the world today. Politicians seem to want us to think it is a problem for us here. But the people who suffer most are the people on the move themselves, children, women and men.

They cannot take with them what they need, never mind what they want.

On the journey, they face many threats and dangers, from exploitation and violence to extortion and human trafficking.

Of course, if they were Mary, Joseph and the Christ Child, we would want to reach out and help to meet their needs.

Do I see the faces of Mary, Joseph and the Christ Child in the people being taken across the channel on small boats or rafts, who are the target night-after-night in loud, baying protests outside cheap hotels and shoddy accommodation, who are vilified by far-right politicians and extremists for the sake of votes from the baying mobs?

Where can they find the Advent Hope and the present of Christ’s presence among his people this Christmas?

Did Mary and Joseph have essential and appropriate travelling papers with them as they travelled from Nazareth to Bethlehem or when they fled as refugees from Bethlehem to Egypt? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 30 November 2025, Advent I):

The theme this week (30 to 6 December 2025) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The Kingdom is for All’ (pp 6-7). This theme is introduced today with a programme update from the Revd Magela, Vicar of Cristo Redentor Parish in Tocantins, Brazil and coordinator of Casa A+, a place of hope and healing for people living with HIV, who writes:

Read Luke 14: 21-23

Beloved, these words of Jesus are a cry against any policy that excludes, condemns, or silences. When we deny care to those who need it most – people living with HIV/AIDS, homeless populations, sex workers, black youth, trans people, people living in the peripheries – we are denying the Gospel itself.

Our calling as a Church is not to build walls, but to open paths. It is not to feed stigma, but to heal wounds. When laws criminalise the bodies and identities of key populations, the Kingdom is wounded. When funding is cut, Grace is denied. When prejudice decides who lives and who dies, we must rise up with spiritual and pastoral authority.

I have witnessed many people come to Casa A+ after suffering through years of misdiagnoses and severe health deterioration. People like Sinval and Sinair come to us after facing rapid decline in their health, but thankfully we are still able to help them. Our ultimate aim is not just to prevent deaths from AIDS, but also to combat the social stigma and isolation it causes. At Casa A+, we strive to offer life, dignity, and empowerment to those affected – transforming despair into hope.

As Christians in the Global South, we say with faith and courage:

We will not go back. We will not return to indifference.

We will not return to omission.

We will not return to complicit silence.

We will remain steadfast in our mission to proclaim a God who heals, welcomes, and transforms. A God who does not discriminate. A God who is in the trenches of public health, in shelters, in the voices that resist.

Because the Kingdom is for all people. And life is our liturgy.

The USPG Prayer Diary today invites us to pray as we read and meditate on Matthew 24: 36-44.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and to put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
that on the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

O Lord our God,
make us watchful and keep us faithful
as we await the coming of your Son our Lord;
that, when he shall appear,
he may not find us sleeping in sin
but active in his service
and joyful in his praise;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Almighty God,
as your kingdom dawns,
turn us from the darkness of sin
to the light of holiness,
that we may be ready to meet you
in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Collect on the Eve of Saint Andrew:

Almighty God,
who gave such grace to your apostle Saint Andrew
that he readily obeyed the call of your Son Jesus Christ
and brought his brother with him:
call us by your holy word,
and give us grace to follow you without delay
and to tell the good news of your kingdom;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

The first candle on the Advent wreath is a reminder of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, our ancestors in faith (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

The countdown to Christmas begins with a book launch in Dublin this evening

The Royal Irish Academy, Dawson Street, Dublin … the venue for this evening’s launch of ‘Christmas and the Irish’ edited by Professor Salvador Ryan

Patrick Comerford

I was supposed to be in Dublin this evening for the launch of a new book, Christmas and the Irish: a miscellany, edited by my friend and colleague, Professor Salvador Ryan of Maynooth. I was at Luton Airport this morning when I realised I had left my passport back in Stony Stratford, and it was too late to return in time to retrieve it.

I am missing the launch of this new book in the Royal Irish Academy, Dawson Street, this evening (30 November 2023) by the Wexford folklorist Michael Fortune.

This collection, follows the success of his three-volume series, Birth, Marriage and Death and the Irish (2016-2021), and it has been a privilege to have been invited to contribute to all four volumes in this collection.

There are only 25 days to go to Christmas, so is worth adding this new book to your list of Christmas presents this year.

This book examines the celebration of Christmas among the Irish, from the seventh century to the present day. The 75 chapters or articles range from the serious to the light-hearted, The writers are drawn from a range of academic disciplines and professions, including anthropology, Celtic studies, education, folklore, healthcare, history, journalism, literature, media and broadcasting, pastoral ministry, philosophy and theology.

In our papers, we reflect on what Christmas has meant to Irish people through the ages, whether living at home or abroad.

The topics include: the theme of light in early Irish texts; festive feasting and fighting in the Middle Ages; the Kilmore carols of Co Wexford; the history of Irish Christmas food through the centuries; crimes of Christmas past; Christmas on the Blasket Islands; the claim that ‘Santa’s Grave’ is in County Kilkenny; why Irish missionaries in Zimbabwe regularly missed out on their Christmas dinner; the origins and early life of the ‘Late Late Toy Show’; a Christmas surprise among Irish peacekeepers in the Lebanon; Christmas customs among the Travelling Community; Christmas and the Irish Jewish community; the Wren Boys; ‘Women’s Christmas’; Irish links to popular Christmas carols; Christmas and James Joyce; the curious custom of reciting 4,000 ‘Hail Marys’ in the lead up to Christmas; and why it became an established tradition for the Viceroy to send a woodcock to the British monarch every Christmas.

This anthology is a fascinating read for all who are interested in the social, cultural, and religious history of Ireland, and undoubtedly it will delight everyone who loves Christmas.

Many of the contributors are my friends and colleagues. In her essay, another Wexford historian, Dr Ida Milne of Carlow College, recalls her mother being the organist at the Christmas carol services in Ferns Cathedral.

Other contributors include Ian d’Alton of TCD, Seamus Dooley of the NUJ, the Limerick historian Seán Gannon, Crawford Gribben and Laurence Kirkpatrick, both of QUB, the singer-songwriter Max McCoubrey, Miriam Moffitt, John-Paul Sheridan of Maynooth, and Clodagh Tait of Limerick.

For the past few weeks, we have been rehearsing the ‘Wexford Carol’ in the choir in Saint Mary and Sint Giles Church in Stony Stratford for this year’s carol services. So, this adds to my pleasure that the ‘Wexford Carol’ is the subject of one of my three papers in the new book:

• The ‘Wexford Carol’ and the mystery surrounding some old and popular Christmas carols;

• ‘We Three Kings of Orient are’: an Epiphany carol with Irish links;

• Molly Bloom’s Christmas card: where Joycean fiction meets a real-life family.

Salvador Ryan is also planning some regional ‘launches’ of sorts over the next two weeks:

• National Museum of Ireland (Country Life), Castlebar, Co Mayo, Saturday (2 December) at 3 pm. There, Salvador Ryan will talk about Christmas traditions and their origins, followed by a small launch of the book afterwards.

• Cavan County Museum, Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan, Wednesday (6 December) at 7pm. Once again, he will deliver a presentation in song and story on the origins of Christmas.

• Source Library and Arts Centre, Thurles, Co Tipperary, Tuesday 12 December at 8pm. This will be a launch of the volume by the local poet Larry Doherty.

Salvador Ryan is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Saint Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth. He writes on religious and cultural history from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. His other published titles include Death and the Irish, Marriage and the Irish, and Birth and the Irish (Dublin: Wordwell Books, 2016-2021); We Remember Maynooth: a College across Four Centuries (Dublin: Messenger Publications, 2020); Northern European Reformations: Transnational Perspectives (Palgrave, 2020); Material Cultures of Devotion in the Age of Reformations (Peeters, 2022), and Reforming the Church: Global Perspectives (Liturgical Press, 2023).

Copies of Christmas and the Irish: a miscellany are available to buy at each launch event, and it is also available to order in time for Christmas through local bookshops.

This was supposed to be a quick overnight visit to Dublin, and I had booked a flight back later tomorrow. Evem if I had travelled, I would have missed to miss the launch of the latest 2023 edition of the Old Limerick Journal in Dooradoyle Branch Library, Limerick, at 7 p.m. tomorrow evening (Friday 1 December 2023). It is being launched by Councillor Dan McSweeney, Deputy Mayor of Limerick City and County.

The Old Limerick Journal is edited by Tom Donovan and published by Limerick Museum. My paper in this latest edition looks at the Sephardic and Limerick ancestry of one of the most eminent Irish scientists of the 20th century. My six-page paper, ‘The Sephardic family roots and heritage of John Desmond Bernal, Limerick scientist’, is illustrated with nine of my photographs from Córdoba, Limerick, London and Venice.

Meanwhile, I heard yesterday that another history book in which I have a chapter has also been publsiehd this week and is due in the bookshops in time for Christmas. My seven-page paper, ‘Church-goers in Limerick During War and Revolution’, is Chapter 6 in Histories of Protestant Limerick, 1912-1923, and is accompanied by three of my photographs.

The book is edited Seán William Gannon, who is also a contributor to the Christmas book being launched this evening, along with Brian Hughes and is published by Limerick City & County Council.

Earlier this year, I co-wrote a book on the Philhellenes in Greek history, looking at the role of Irish Philhellenes in the Greek War of Independence in the 19th century. My research was published as «Ο Sir Richard Church και οι Ιρλανδοι Φιλελληνες στον Πολεμο των Ελληνων για την Ανεξαρτησια» in Πανος Καραγιώργος και Patrick Comerford, Ο Φιλελληνισμος και η Ελληνικη Επανασταση του 1821, published in Thessaloniki by Εκδοτικος Οικος Κ κ Σταμουλη.

I also edited and wrote the introduction to Who is Our Neighbour?, a six-session study course for Lent 2023 published in London by the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).

In addition, my photographs have appeared in three books , including one published in Washington DC: National Geographic, and the cover photograph on Tim Vivian’s latest collection of poetry, A Doorway into Thanks: Further Reflections on Scripture.

But, I hope to share more in the coming weeks about my latest contributions to these books on Christmas and the civil war in Limerick and my paper on JD Bernal’s interesting ancestry.

• Christmas and the Irish: a miscellany, ed Salvador Ryan (Dublin: Wordwell Books), €25, ISBN: 978-1-913934-93-4. This new book can be ordered HERE.

The 2023 edition of the Old Limerick Journal is being launched in Dooradoyle Branch Library, Limerick, tomorrow evening