The President, Mrs McAleese, has launched a book on the Jewish community in Ireland and has described it as particularly relevant now, when large numbers of people are arriving in the State almost daily and seeking asylum.
The book, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland, by Prof Dermot Keogh, professor of history at University College Cork, is an examination of the relationship between the Jewish community and the Irish State. It looks at the Jewish contribution to Ireland, at nationalism and at anti-Semitism in Ireland, with particular emphasis on the 1930s and 1940s.
Saying the book should be compulsory reading for everyone, the President described it as a reminder "of how easy it is to turn on `others' and to exclude those who don't quite fit in with our concepts of `normality'."
"It is a sobering reminder that the tendency to exclude and isolate `others' is still with us, and there is much to be learned from examining the treatment of the Jewish community in Ireland," she said.
"The contribution which the Jewish community has made to Irish life has been far out of proportion to its size, and the launch of the book gives us cause and opportunity to express our gratitude to those who made Ireland their home place - and despite the ugly episodes of anti-Semitic activity and attitude - made such a significant and lasting contribution to building the Ireland we have today."
The Provost of Trinity College, Prof Tom Mitchell, said it was appropriate that the book should be launched in Trinity, which was establishing an international chair in Jewish studies and which this year celebrated the 350th anniversary of the establishment of a chair in Hebrew. Prof Keogh presented a copy of his book to the President and to Dr Maureen Junker Kenny, head of the School of Hebrew, Biblical and Theological Studies in Trinity.
He told an audience which included leading members of the Jewish community in Ireland that his research had reinforced the view that the Jewish community had played a positive and creative role in Irish society. But he noted that the community's population had dropped from about 6,000 in the 1940s to about 1,500 today.
Speaking before the launch, Prof Keogh described the Irish anti-Semitism of the 1880s and 1890s, and the friendship in the 1930s and 1940s between the very influential Chief Rabbi, Isaac Herzog, and the then Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera. He said that while there was anti-Semitism in Ireland it was never a defining feature of Irish government. There was no tolerance at the Taoiseach's level for anti-Semitism "but the Departments of Justice and Industry and Commerce were not so clear in their attitude towards Jews and Jewish refugees".