An American Jew in Dublin

Dear Friend and Reader,

When I landed in Dublin last week, the population of Jews in Ireland went from zero to one. The Jewish bakery, in the Jewish quarter of the city, is run and owned by an Asian couple. The synagogue has been converted into the city’s Jewish museum. No one there knows what a decent bagel tastes like, and if I were to ask for a shmear of cream cheese or describe someone as klutzy, chances are they’ll either not know the word, not know it’s Yiddish, or both.

As my girlfriend’s brother texted to me, I’m “like something different and exotic for Christmas. Like during WW2 when they imported oranges and bananas!”В He always puts a smile on my face.

It’s interesting though, because I never thought of myself as exotic before I went to Ireland. Sure, I was a minority, growing up among a Christian majority, but my cultural roots were strong. My extended family — mostly made up of my parent’s friends because my blood-family is quite small — are all Jewish, my earliest sexual experiences were at Temple and I was actively involved in youth group, Jewish summer camp, etc. etc. So I was always part of a strong sub-culture: small in numbers, big in presence.

Like much of my generation, I’ve grown away from religion as I’ve gotten older. Judaism has made that easy for me; there are so many cultural aspects that can be separated from the religious that the term Cultural JudaismВ is widely recognized: we still eat matzoh on Passover, but we don’t recline and read the Haggadah. For Yom Kippur this year, our Day of Atonement, my mom and I didn’t fast, but we still invited people over for “break fast,” when we stuff our faces with bagels, lox and noodle kugel as if we hadn’t eaten all day.

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