The Limerick Boycott of Jews

Every St. Patrick's Day, the world celebrates Ireland, the green hills, the craic, the warmth of its people. But behind the shamrocks and Guinness, Ireland has a history most revelers never hear about. In the Irish city of Limerick, over a century ago, the town's tiny Jewish community was targeted with economic boycott and physical violence until they were driven out entirely. And the same hatred that fueled that campaign appears to be alive and well in Ireland today.

Limerick is perhaps best known today for the short, silly rhymes that share its name. Historians speculate that limericks, five-line poems with an AABBA rhyme scheme, originated in pubs in and around the city in the 1890s. But while pub-goers were composing silly verses, Limerick harbored a dark, violent hatred toward its tiny Jewish minority.

Building new lives in Limerick

Jews began arriving in Limerick in the 1880s, fleeing waves of violent pogroms, state-sponsored anti-Jewish riots, that swept the Russian Empire. Locals descended on Jewish towns and neighborhoods, killing Jews with abandon, attacking men, women, and children, and stealing whatever they could.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews fled west, settling across western Europe, Britain, Latin America, and the United States. Improbably, some of these desperate families landed in Limerick. By 1878, 20 Jewish families called the city home. (Other Jewish communities sprang up in Cork, Dublin, Waterford, Belfast, Lurgan, Londonderry, and Dundalk.)

By 1904, 35 Jewish families lived in Limerick, most from present-day Lithuania.

By 1904, 35 Jewish families lived in Limerick, most from present-day Lithuania. Several came from the Lithuanian shtetl of Akmayan, which was 80% Jewish, where Jews faced constant harassment and discrimination from Russian authorities. (In 1915, every Jew in Akmayan was ordered to leave.) These newcomers settled around Colooney Street (today Wolfe Tone Street), established a Jewish cemetery, and began building a community. Two homes served as synagogues. Local Jews formed a mutual aid society to help those in need. Desperately poor, most worked as peddlers, selling clothes, shoes, books, and other goods.

Jewish peddlers proved popular with Irish consumers. Known for extending credit to anyone who asked, they helped people afford goods they couldn't otherwise buy. But resentment built when customers were stuck with the bills. Limerick's residents began viewing their Jewish neighbors with suspicion, and looked for any excuse to turn on them.

Growing anti-Jewish hatred

The first signs came early. On Easter Sunday in 1884, a mob surrounded the home of Lieb Siev and his family, hurling rocks through their windows and injuring Mrs. Siev and her children. The attackers claimed a local maid had seen the family mistreating a chicken. Two ringleaders were tried and sentenced to a month in jail.

Anti-Jewish violence became routine. When a rabbi visited Limerick in August 1892, he noted that just before his arrival two Jewish men had been attacked and beaten outside town. In November 1896, a crowd surrounded the home of Moses Leone and smashed his windows.

Despite this, Jewish life persisted. By 1904, around 130 Jews lived in Limerick. They had a rabbi - Rabbi Elias Levin - and had purchased a plot outside town to build a synagogue. Then the hatred that had long simmered finally boiled over.

Boycott the Jews

On January 7, 1904, two Limerick Jews, Fanny Toohey and Maurice B. Maissell, got married. It was, as the Limerick Chronicle sourly noted, a beautiful event. Fanny wore white satin. Maurice wore a top hat. Bridesmaids arrived in long feather-trimmed capes. Some guests arrived in horse-drawn wagons.

Limerick residents seethed that Jews were getting rich at Christian expense.

The sight of Jews in fine clothes enraged their non-Jewish neighbors. The Limerick Chronicle described the wedding in lavish detail before noting that outside the venue stood "those who wore poverty's motley, while inside were clad in fine broadcloth and silks and satins goodly to look upon." Limerick residents seethed that Jews were getting rich at Christian expense.

Four days later, Father John Creagh, spiritual director of the Arch Confraternity of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic organization with about 6,000 members, addressed the wedding in his Sunday sermon. Calling Limerick's Jews "usurers" (predatory moneylenders), he claimed they had crucified Jesus, "called down the curse on their heads," and were creatures filled with malice. "The Jews came to Limerick apparently the most miserable tribe imaginable," he preached, "and now they have enriched themselves... Their rags have been exchanged for silk. How do the Jews manage to make their money?" His answer: by tricking and manipulating Christians.

Father John Creagh

About 200 members of the Confraternity immediately took to the streets, throwing rocks and mud at Jews, breaking windows, vandalizing Jewish property. Police arrested eleven. Then Father Creagh urged his followers to boycott Jewish businesses and destroy their livelihoods. A correspondent for the London-based Jewish Chronicle reported hearing mobs chant "death to the Jews" and "we must hunt them out." He wrote that it reminded him of the Kishinev Pogrom the previous year, in which roughly 50 Jews were murdered and thousands more injured in present-day Moldova.

Public figures rushed to support the boycott. Arthur Griffith, the journalist who founded the Sinn Fein political party, was a vocal backer. The Times of London supported the boycott and urged a similar one in England. Many people with open credit accounts at Jewish shops seized the moment to erase their debts. Limerick's Jews found themselves unable to collect on any of their loans.

Some Jewish merchants tried to prove their innocence with facts, as if the boycott were somehow rational and could be defeated with evidence. Max Bland, a Jewish grocer, and Rabbi Levin offered to open all their business records to Limerick's leaders. Rabbi Levin pointed out that of 1,387 citations for breaking the law in Limerick in 1903, just 31 involved Jews, and those were for trivial offenses. None of it mattered. Limerick's leaders, like nearly everyone else in the city, backed the boycott.

Growing violence

In April 1904 alone, there were 40 violent attacks on Limerick's Jews. Saul Goldberg, one of the community's most prominent members, brought a group of Jews to meet Roman Catholic Bishop Edward O'Dwyer to ask for his intervention. The Bishop declined. When Church of Ireland Bishop Thomas Bunbury condemned the attacks, Limerick's mayor and city leaders bristled and doubled down in defending the mobs. The city's Protestants were largely sympathetic to the Jews; its much larger Catholic population was not.

In April 1904 alone, there were 40 violent attacks on Limerick's Jews.

Only one person was ever prosecuted: a young man named Johnny Rahilly, sentenced to a month in jail for throwing rocks at Rabbi Levin. When he was released, a huge crowd greeted him with a gold pocket watch and chain, then carried him on their shoulders through the streets of Limerick.

Leaving Limerick

The boycott lasted over two years, from 1904 to 1906, and achieved its goal. One Limerick Jew, Marcus Joseph Blond, wrote to The Times describing what had happened to him. He had moved to Limerick, worked hard, built a successful store on Henry Street, until Father Creagh's sermons unleashed hatred on the community. Though Marcus had always dealt honestly, his customers boycotted him. He was forced to sell his entire stock and fixtures at humiliating prices to non-Jewish shopkeepers. He left for Dublin after four months and died there in 1905 at the age of 40.

Rabbi Levin fought to keep the community together. He wrote to newspapers in Ireland and England: "If we are to suffer for our religion like our ancestors... let us at least not perish in silence, let our names be inscribed in the bloody civilization and tolerance of Limerick of the twentieth century."

By the time the boycott ended in 1906, Limerick's Jewish community had been gutted. When Ireland gained independence in 1922, just a handful of Jews remained in the city.

Anti-Jewish boycotts today

Limerick still has a small Jewish community, as well as those who call for boycotts of Jews and Jewish institutions.

The University of Limerick's Student Life organization has declared it is "committed to participating in the BDS campaign" calling for a total boycott, divestment, and sanctions against the Jewish state, including "boycotting Israeli research institutions and universities." On May 22, 2024, the university assured anti-Israel activists that it "has no active partnership with Israeli academic institutions." Several Limerick professors have gone further, publicly pledging to boycott Israeli researchers in all forums.

Support for boycotting Israel reaches into Limerick's government as well. City Council member Ursula Gavin has been outspoken in support of Ireland's "Occupied Territories Bill," which would criminalize trade with many Israeli companies in Ireland. Limerick's City Council has flown the PLO flag above its building twice in recent years, in 2024 and 2025. Zoe Lawlor, the leader of Ireland's anti-Israel movement since Hamas' October 2023 terror attacks, lives in Limerick.

Ireland has become one of Israel's harshest critics in the European Union.

Despite having a Jewish population of just 2,200, Ireland has become one of Israel's harshest critics in the European Union. Ireland recognized the State of Palestine in May 2024. Israel shut its embassy in Dublin that same year. A few months later, Ireland joined South Africa's case in the International Criminal Court accusing Israel of genocide and crimes against humanity. In November 2025, Ireland elected Catherine Connolly as President in a landslide. She has described Israel as a "terrorist" and "rogue" state and has called Hamas "part of the fabric of the Palestinian people."

When Ireland opened a community reporting hotline for antisemitic harassment in July 2025, the office was overwhelmed. In just six months, Irish Jews reported 143 incidents, including vandalism, threats, physical assault, hate messages, discrimination, verbal abuse, and exclusion. Nearly a third of the incidents were triggered by visible Jewish identity: speaking Hebrew, wearing a Jewish symbol.

In December 2024, as Irish-Israeli relations deteriorated further, the Limerick Civic Trust weighed in, claiming the 1904-6 boycott was not a "pogrom," as some historians have called it, and insisting it should not color people's views of Limerick, dismissing it as a fringe movement with little public support.

That wasn't true in 1904. And it doesn't appear to be true today.