Elaine Feldman

Elaine Feldman (31 March 1916 – 19 October 2006) was an Irish public figure and co-founder of the first secondary school for the Jewish community in Dublin. Early life and family Elaine Feldman was born Elaine Freeman at 19 Kenilworth Park, Harold's Cross, Dublin on 31 March 1916. She was the second child of Maurice and Ada Freeman (née Price). Her father was a Russian immigrant who had a number of businesses on Kevin Street, and her mother volunteered with the local Jewish school at the Adelaide Road Synagogue, training young Jewish children in their religion. Like many other Jewish children, Feldman attended the Protestant Wesley College, as Protestant schools were more accommodating of the needs of observant Jews. Feldman was appointed the first day-girl prefect at age 14, when she complained that day girls were unsupervised at lunchtime. She was awarded a bursary to Trinity College Dublin based on her Leaving Certificate results, but instead she entered the civil service upon leaving school in 1934. She first worked Department of Finance, and after the declaration of the Emergency, in the Department of Defence. It was noted that her arrival and departure from Dublin Castle on her bicycle often drew a crowd of people supposedly unaccustomed to seeing a Jew. She married Jacob 'Jack' Feldman (died 1985) on 31 March 1941. He was a commercial traveller and later a shop owner. Owing to the marriage bar, Feldman had to resign from her civil service job. The couple had two sons and one daughter, Maurice, Alec, and Estelle. Stratford College When the Feldman's children were old enough for secondary school, both of them were unhappy at the limited choices available to Jewish children, especially as there was a lack of space in Protestant schools. They also feared that a secular education would leave their children without a full appreciation of their heritage as orthodox observant Jews. In 1952, Feldman was among the five people at a meeting in Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobvits's house, a meeting that would lead eventually to the foundation of the first Jewish secondary school in Ireland, Stratford College, Rathgar. In September 1952 the school opened on Terenure Road East with a small group of children from the Jewish national school in Bloomfield Avenue.