Jon Ihle

Hello, Clare.

It's a good question.

I think there is definitely, in my experience, and I should say I've lived in Ireland for most of the last 30 years, so basically my entire adult life, there was a big change I noticed when I moved here.

I was born and raised in New York, obviously a city with a very large Jewish population, where to be Jewish wasn't in any way remarkable.

And I should say that I was raised as a secular Jew, meaning we didn't attend synagogue regularly.

You know, we sort of half-heartedly celebrated the holidays.

But in my own personal experience, when I came over here, I recognized something in me that was a difference that wasn't fully explained by being an American.

And I think that that difference that I began to notice was partly how I was regarded because I was Jewish.

Now, I wouldn't say that was entirely a negative experience, although it sometimes was.

And what I mean by that was I think I had a naive idea that Jews were sort of known and understood everywhere because that was the environment I grew up in.

And when I moved over here, I realized that.

People don't really know anything about the Jewish people or Jewish history and, you know, our place in the world.

And that's completely fine.

The Jewish population here is very, very small, although in Dublin, I think Jews have played a very significant role in the history of the city.

So what I would say is what I first recognized, I had my first experience, let's say, of overt anti-Semitism in Ireland, right?

And that was within a few months of arriving here.

And then sort of since then, over the years, you know, what I have noticed is that there is a discourse specifically about Israel that I think bleeds over and affects people who are Jewish, Irish Jews or Jews who live in Ireland.

Mm-hmm.

And it's very difficult to disentangle that connection, right, and understand what is specifically about the policies of the country of Israel and what is maybe more embedded in a much deeper and longstanding set of attitudes that Europeans, I would say, have about the Jewish people.

Well, that is something that has been a feature of Jewish life as long as I've been here, although it has intensified in the last two and a half years since the war in Gaza, since the attacks of October 7th and all of the subsequent violence.