"Wonderful Gesture"

In the course of his wide-ranging fantasies, the hero of James Joyce's Ulysses imagined himself invested with the scarlet mantle and gold chain of the Lord Mayor of Dublin. To Joyce, Leopold Bloom's dream was doubly fanciful because-he was a Jew -and what chance would a Jew have of becoming major of Dublin town?

Last week the notion proved not so fanciful at all. Dublin, which is 95% Roman Catholic, got its first Jewish mayor: Robert Briscoe, 61, a leader of Dublin's small community of 5,000 Jews. The Irish saw nothing incongruous about Alderman Briscoe's selection (which was decided by a tie-breaking draw from a black bowler). Bobby Briscoe was Dublin born and Dublin reared, had joined the I.R.A. as a mere lad, taken up arms for freedom, and worked 29 years for it with De Valera in the Dail. He had been in on some of the spectacular events, too, like the time he and the I.R.A. boys seized the Irish Free State consulate in New York back in 23 and held it under siege until the New York police riot squad drove them out. In Parliament he was a passionate advocate of better housing. "My religion never came under discussion even in the heat of controversy." And everybody understood why he took an active part in the underground movement to establish the state of Israel: the parallel was close to every Irishman.

Said the new Lord Mayor: "This is a wonderful gesture that will go forth to the world to show that in Catholic Ireland a man of any faith can have the good will of his co-citizens if he deserves it and is prepared to give service to his fellow man."

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