The Jews of Cork may have lost their synagogue last year but the story of how Leeside became home to a small, thriving Jewish community in the early half of the 20th century is about to be chronicled at a new permanent exhibition at Cork Public Musuem later this month.
Entitled “The Tsar, the Rosehills and the Music Shop”, the exhibition, which will be opened by Cork born film maker, Louis Marcus, tells how Jews, fleeing persecution from the Imperial Russian territory of Lithuania in the late 19th century, arrived in Cork and made it their home.
Aileen O’Connor of West Cork company, Heritageworks, which helped organise the exhibition, explained that it traces the growth of the Jewish community in Cork from the 1880s through to its decline when in 2016 the synagogue on South Terrace closed due to lack of the lack of a quorum.