This essay examines the protagonist Bloom’s non-Halachic Jewishness, specifically the anarchist inclination, as the ideal Irish identity. Bloom represents the modern European Jew, assimilated to Christian culture, thus technically “non-Jewish Jew.” The assimilated Jew Bloom is endowed with survival qualities, such as multicultural, pacific, and pragmatic thinking, which are negatively defined as a-national, feminine, and profit-loving nature, respectively. Capable of surviving the nationalist and racist Europe, Bloom is suggested as the ideal Irish, similarly suffering cultural and racial prejudices under British rule.

One of the stereotypes assigned to the Jew was a criminal, particularly an anarchist, image which represented violence and conspiracy. While the anarchist acquired an evil reputation as the enemy of society, given the terrorist activity carried out throughout Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, the fundamental principle of anarchism stands for liberty, rejecting all authorities. The Jew, inclined to have a “messianic” conscience, was a socialist or an anarchist in disposition according to Joyce’s reading of the socialist historian Ferrero. Bloom’s belief in “life” as “love,” free from violence and intolerance, reveals him as the assimilated Jewish anarchist who dreams of a free community founded on voluntary activities of free individuals. Furthermore, with his pragmatism, which eventually leads him to reject the Zionist movement, Bloom’s peaceful anarchist tendency renders him desirable for colonial Ireland which needs a practical freedom-loving mind.