Voices of Cork’s Jewish past

A video telling the fascinating childhood stories of some of Cork’s Jewish community is set to be released later this month.

Created by award-winning musician and performer Ruti Lachs, ‘Memories of a Cork Jewish Childhood’ features a number of speakers telling their stories of growing up in Cork’s vibrant Jewish community from the 1950s to the 1980s.

The 13 minute video, which will premiere on Cork Heritage Open Day on 14 August, follows the success of Ruti’s 2020 project ‘Cork Jewish Culture Virtual Walk’, a video taking viewers on a tour of seven Jewish sites in the city.

Ruti’s 2020 project attracted huge attention from Jewish individuals and communities worldwide. It was these ensuing interactions that Ruti says inspired her to create her latest project. “You can read history in books, but to get to know the people that were born here 50, 60, 70, 80 years ago has just been amazing. It has definitely gone in directions I couldn't have imagined,” Ruti told the Cork Independent. Rather than focusing just on history, Ruti says her new video looks at the real people and their experiences of Cork from that era. Filmed on 11 July, the project takes the form of a meeting of community members via Zoom, some still living in Cork, and some now living abroad. “When you watch the video you feel like you're actually meeting these people that you might have known if you lived in Cork 60 years ago, just normal Cork people who happen to be Jewish,” says Ruti.

One person to feature in the video now lives in Israel but Ruti says she still has a Cork accent behind her Israeli accent. Another person who contacted Ruti just a week before the video was made, told her they themselves were not from Cork but that their grandfather had been a rabbi in Cork in the 1920s and 1930s.

Ruti says one of the most interesting challenges of completing a project like this is to align all of the different anecdotal versions of events from different people’s experiences of the time. “When you remember being ten when you're 50, it's got a very different gloss on it than it did when you were ten. There are as many angles as there are people,” says Ruti.

Cork has a long Jewish history going back as far as the 1700s. In 1977, the first Jewish Lord Mayor of Cork City, Gerald Yael Goldberg was appointed to office.

For more information and to watch Ruti’s latest project on 14 August, visit rutilachs.ie.