Raphael Siev, Irish Jewish Museum curator. Rachel King.

by Sharon Udasin

For any visitor to Dublin’s rustic Irish Jewish Museum, the warm-natured, red-bearded curator Raphael Siev was more than a familiar face: he was a fount of information and an admired Irish-Jewish leader.

Siev, 73, died of a short illness in the last week of January, during which he had insisted upon speaking at a Holocaust memorial event, The Independent newspaper in Dublin reported.

“Thousands of people went through the museum,” said Rabbi Zalman Lent, spiritual leader at the Dublin Hebrew Congregation and Chabad emissary to Ireland. 

The museum, formerly the Walworth Road Synagogue, opened its doors in 1985, in an inauguration led by Chaim Herzog, the Irish-born former president of Israel and son to Ireland’s first chief rabbi, Siev had told a group of Columbia Journalism graduate students when they visited the museum a year ago. Continue reading…