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"I jump into a sand pit for a living"

Jonathan Edwards, World record triple-jumper

Does your rabbi know you are here?,

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Anthony Clavane, London, Quercus, 2012. ISBN 978 0 85738 812 4

On the day that I am writing this review, I read that police are investigating anti-Semitism at a recent Leeds United game. The subject of the book suddenly seemed more topical that I realized.

The book documents Jewish engagement with football and the obstacles Jews encountered along the way both from within and without. “A leitmotif of this book has been the Jewish community’s extreme anxiety to win acceptance in its adopted country”.

I was shocked to see how pervasive was anti-Semitism in England over much of the last century with Jews being denied membership of sports clubs and indeed entry to some professions. David Pleat is quoted: “When I first started in football something always used to crop up, like a moronic centre-half in a dressing room saying, ‘He’s a Jew you know.’” There is even a quotation from a supposed expert that Jews were “distinctly inferior to Christians in lung capacity”.

For Jews who wanted to play football there were hurdles to overcome. Sport was often deemed, within their own community, to be fundamentally un-Jewish. Football was often referred to as “the English game”. Playing it not only desecrated the Sabbath, but rejected the separateness, the “usand-themness” of the Jewish religion. Those who tried to get a compromise by playing on Sunday found that the FA rules (until the 1950s) banned Sunday football.

The author argues on the other hand that for many Jews football was the gateway to assimilation into UK society. He writes of his own experience: “Like many Jews of my generation, football provided entry to an English childhood and confirmed my English identity”. For him wanting to play football and sharing a love for Leeds United made him fit in with the “gentile” boys at school. Football offered a strong sense of belonging in England, allowing “Mr Football Jew” to come in from the cold.

The book charts the early pioneers to players like Mark Lazarus in the 1970s. David Pleat is the first ever Jewish manager of a top club. Irving Scholar and David Dein are seen as the architects of the modern Premier League club for what they did at Spurs and Arsenal – not to forget Abramovitch at Chelsea. The final symbol of acceptance is successive Jewish chairmen of the FA, David Triesman and David Bernstein.

The task the author set himself is summed up in a somewhat complex paragraph: “The argument of this book is that the role of Jews in English football’s transformation from a working-class pursuit played in crumbling arenas to a global entertainment industry has been driven by this trope; that English football has, for the past century, been a vehicle for anglicisation, a space where ethnic identity has connected, even become intertwined, with national identity; an arena where Jews have fought the notion that they were invaders who needed to be fended off, newcomers who did not belong”.

This is a very important – if at times a bit uncomfortable – book. The serious subject is tackled with humour and in a very readable manner.



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