New Jersey Jewish News
MetroWest Feature Story
Verona’s Congregation Beth Ahm salutes St. Patrick, kosher style
They came to Congregation Beth Ahm of West Essex two days after St. Patrick’s Day and one day after Shabbat, and the moment they walked through the door, many donned green yarmulkes and playfully added “O’s” and “Mc’s” to the “Cohens” and “Goldbergs” on their name tags.
For more than an hour, until Cantor Marsha “O’Schrier” picked up a guitar and led the audience in singing “McNamara’s Band” and “Danny Boy,” Irish melodies poured out of the sound system at the Conservative synagogue in Verona.
More than 100 people munched on kosher cold cuts, and a few sampled Irish beer and whiskey, while children made hand-crafted shamrocks.
The unusual cross-cultural get-together was the brainchild of Kevin Buckley, who was born in Dublin and came to the United States in 1982. Although he was not born to Jewish parents, “I found myself a Jewish princess, and we are now a Jewish family,” he told NJ Jewish News.
Buckley and his wife, Karen, reside in Montclair with their children, Molly and Jonah.
“He was an all-American guy by the time I met him in medical school,” Karen said. “We are Irish, American, and Jewish — all of the above.”
“Our families are very compatible,” she added. “We go to Ireland at least once a year and we’ve taken our Jewish nephews to Ireland for their bar mitzvas. St. Patrick’s Day is an important celebration of our family culture.”
Rabbi Aaron Kriegel insisted the afternoon was just that — a cultural celebration — and not a religious event.
“We have a lot of people in this congregation who are Irish and Jewish,” he said. “They are two minority people who came to America because they were poor and persecuted. We were natural enemies when we came over, but we respected each other and we learned to work together. We live in a society that is pluralistic, and this is a blessing for us to see these cultures come together.”
Indeed, moments later, speaking as the afternoon’s master of ceremonies, Buckley told his audience that “the arrival of the Irish in the Jewish community is not the demographic disaster that it has been purported to be. Quite the opposite. It is a sign of liberation. The ghetto wall has been torn down in this wonderful country.”
Adopting the Gaelic name Seamus for the day, James Hargrove described himself as “Irish, German, and Welsh — a mélange,” who grew up in the predominantly Irish Highbridge section of the Bronx. He studied to become a Catholic priest and now lives in Essex Fells with his Jewish wife, Shelley “O” Schwartz.
His wife “has an affinity for things Irish,” Hargrove told NJJN.
Their son, Daniel, “knows he’s Irish and he’s Jewish. He knows who he is, and that is what we are proud of,” said his father.
Sporting a green yarmulke and a sweatshirt emblazoned with the words “Kiss Me, I’m Irish,” Stephen Kaplan Rooney, a Montclair High School student, said the notion of bringing “the Irish and the Jewish together in a synagogue” was “the greatest idea ever. I’m having a lot of fun.”
Steve Rooney, his father, is of Irish, English, and Czech descent. “My family has been multiethnic forever,” he said. “Having St. Patrick’s Day in a synagogue is something new and different.”
His wife, Cindy Kaplan Rooney, agreed. “We wanted to raise our kids Jewish, but we don’t want to ignore a lot of their heritage, so we celebrate every holiday that comes down the pike, except maybe Ramadan. We celebrate Christmas and Hanukka and Easter and Passover, but our house is mainly a Jewish house.”
Kriegel told his audience that “the two groups became attracted to each other and their cultures began to merge. Some Irish became Jewish. Some Jews became Irish. And within four generations they partied here at Congregation Beth Ahm in Verona — an Italian town.”
He called on the partygoers to “recognize this Hibernian Jewish developing culture as the beginning of a new superpower of ability and talent the world has never seen before. Never have two people with such intelligence and such drive come together in one place, and we’re going to make something new and be the strongest people in the world.”
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