Historical Perspectives on Jews and British Sport

Historical Perspectives on Jews and British Sport

 

 

De Montfort University, Leicester

8^th September 2011

 

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME (all presentations in Clephan 3.03)

 

10.30-11.00          Registration, Welcome and Introduction

11.00-11.50          Keynote Paper – Dr Dave Dee (DMU) – Jews and British Sport since 1800: Integration, Ethnicity and anti-Semitism

11.50-12.30          Anthony Clavane – From Abe to Abramovich: Jewish Involvement in English Football – A Hidden History       

12.30-1.30            Lunch

1.30-2.10              Mark Ryan – Harold Abrahams – A Reluctant Jew?

2.10-2.50              Dr Nathan Abrams (Bangor) – Menschlikayt vs. Goyim Naches: Values in the Jewish 'Sporting' Film

2.50-3.10              Tea and Coffee

3.10-3.50              Prof. Mike Huggins (Cumbria) – British Jewry, Sport Gambling and anti-Semitism, 1837-1939

3.50-4.30              Dr Jean Williams (DMU) – A Life less Written – The Bridge Career of Fritzi Gordon

4.30-5.00              Concluding discussion – Chaired by Prof. Tony Collins (DMU)

ABSTRACTS

David Dee – Jews and British Sport since 1800: Integration, Ethnicity and anti-Semitism

Jews have been prominent within British sport since Georgian times, when the renowned Anglo-Jewish pugilist Daniel Mendoza (dubbed ‘The Star of Israel’) dominated the prize-ring. In the twentieth century, Jews experienced considerable success at the elite level of a number of British sports including boxing (‘Kid’ Lewis and ‘Kid’ Berg), athletics (Harold Abrahams) and tennis (Angela Buxton). In a wider sense, British-Jewry has also provided sport in this country with a large number of spectators, supporters, businessmen and administrators.

Whilst the success and visibility of Jews in British sport has been considerable, it is also the case that sporting involvement has exerted a powerful impact on British-Jewry itself. From the era of Daniel Mendoza to the modern day involvement of Jews in the ‘business’ of British football, sport has had a marked effect on the social, cultural and economic life of the community. Sport not only affected the way in which many Jews thought about themselves, but also the way in which Jews were both perceived and received by the wider non-Jewish population.

This paper will give a broad overview of the history of Jewish involvement in British sport from the 1800s to the modern day. Although it will discuss a number of key British-Jewish sportsmen and women, it is more focused around examining the impact that sport had on key aspects of Jewish life and history – namely integration, ethnicity and anti-Semitism. As will be shown, sport was seen to be an aid to the ‘Anglicisation’ of Jewish migrants, a factor in the erosion and reconstruction of Jewish identity and an important arena where Jews suffered – and responded to – racial discrimination. It will argue that understanding the relationship between British Jewry and British sport sheds new light on the Jewish experience within modern Britain.

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Anthony Clavane - From Abe to Abramovich: Jewish Involvement In English Football – A Hidden History    

Jews don’t do football. Or, at least, they don’t play it. This, at any rate, is the myth. Jews are people of the book not people of the penalty shoot-out. In the film Airplane, the following celebrated exchange takes place: Stewardess: “Would you like something to read?” Old Lady: “Do you have anything light?” Stewardess: “How about this leaflet: Famous Jewish Sports Legends?”

And yet English football has been revolutionised by Jews. From Harry ‘Abe’ Morris – the Swindon Town legend who scored 229 goals in seven seasons for the club in the 1920s – to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, the game has been shaped by what David Peace in The Dammed Utd called “a last lost tribe of self-made men… in search of the promised land, of public recognition, of acceptance and of gratitude.”

Over the course of 130 years, football has deeply penetrated Jewish society in England. In four generations, they have gone from being ghetto outcasts to inside outsiders. At the core of this journey, from the Eastern European invasion at the end of the 19^th Century to the “Roman” (Abramovich) invasion at the beginning of the 21^st Century, has been this “last, lost tribe”. Men like Manny Cussins, Leslie Silver, Irving Scholar, Alan Sugar, David Dein and David Bernstein have helped shape the game.

This paper will examine this 'hidden' history and discuss the impact that Jews have had on the English game, both on and off the field. As will be demonstrated, understanding Jewish involvement in football deepens our knowledge not only of the sport itself, but also of immigration history - and of football's effect on the Jewish community.

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Mark Ryan - Harold Abrahams – A Reluctant Jew?

So what would Harold Abrahams have thought of this gathering here today? Would he have thought it necessary or desirable? He never wanted to disrespect his Jewish roots - but neither did he ever want to be defined by them.

Today, we are in a sense defining him by his Jewish origins. And although he was quite used to that, and represented various Jewish organisations when requested to do so, I don't think he was ever particularly pleased to be seen exclusively as a Jew. He favoured integration, commonality.

If I am to be true to Harold, then I will have to point out that he moved away from the Jewish faith towards Christianity as a student at Cambridge, and then later showed no great interest in religion at all. His passion was the bringing together of people through sport, the removal of barriers, not the celebration of specific people in sport because of their ethnic origins.

That is why he sounded like John Lennon towards the end of his life, calling for the Olympic movement to play down nationality during medal ceremonies, and perhaps even stage the same Olympics in different countries simultaneously. He really wanted the world to imagine there were no countries, no barriers between the various races or religions.

He may have been fired by anti-Semitism as a boy and young man; but global friendship was his vision for sport, and he didn't want anything to get in the way of that.

So whilst Abrahams would see it as right for each person to be proud of their origins, he would be asking each one of us here to look beyond them, to find something even more important.

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Nathan Abrams - Menschlikayt vs. Goyim Naches: Values in the Jewish 'Sporting' Film

A classic Jewish adage states, ‘Who is a hero? He who conquers his desire’. Since toughness was downgraded in normative rabbinic culture, physical, martial and bodily virtues, which flowered in natural surroundings, were rejected in favour of a scholarliness that thrived indoors. Denied the right to bear arms, ride horses, duel, joust or arch competitively, Diaspora Jews, in return, rejected the competitive drive ethos of what they disparagingly called goyim naches (Yiddish: lit. ‘pleasure of/for the Gentiles’), but which can be translated to mean the contemptuous Jewish term for the prevailing Gentile/dominant ideology of “manliness” dominant in Europe’ (Boyarin 1997: 23). Goyim naches valued ‘those characteristics that in European culture have defined a man as manly: physical strength, martial activity and aggressiveness’ (Boyarin 1997: 78) such as a ‘preoccupation with the body, sensuality, rashness, and ruthless force’ (Sammons 1988: 91). These were considered goyish (Yiddish: ‘un-Jewish/Gentile’) and since the word goy (Hebrew: lit. ‘nation’ but used to mean ‘a Gentile’) is related to that of geviyah (Hebrew: body), the word goyim (plural of goy) can also be interpreted to mean bodily. In this way, Diaspora Jews rejected manly bodily pursuits, namely fighting, duelling, wrestling, hunting and sports.

Instead, a code of menschlikayt (Yiddish: ethical responsibility, social justice and decency for others expressed in kindness) was developed in response to anti-Semitism, as a means of articulating Jewish superiority through a refusal to share the aggressive values of the Jews’ oppressors. Menschlikyat emphasised the moderate and intellectual values of Yiddishkeit (Yiddish: lit. ‘Jewishness’, Jewish culture) such as timidity, meekness, physical frailty and gentleness, privileging the pale scholarly Jew who studied indoors, excluded from the worlds of labour and warfare. A more recent articulation of this sentiment occurred in film Meet the Fockers, when Bernie Focker (Dustin Hoffman) stated of his parenting philosophy: ‘We’ve always tried to instil a sense of self in Gaylord [Ben Stiller] without being too goal-oriented. It’s not about winning or losing, it’s about passion. We just want him to love what he’s doing’, clearly rejecting the predominant paradigm of goyim naches in favour of Yiddishkeit and menschlikayt. In this paper, taking two ‘Jewish’ sports films, namely, Chariots of Fire and Wondrous Oblivion, I will explore how they both ultimately valorise the values of Yiddishkeit and menschlikayt rather than bodily ‘competitive drive’ ethos of goyim naches and as such their status as ‘sports films’ is questionable.

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Mike Huggins - Sport, Betting, Anti-Semitism and English Jewry 1800-1939

While American research has explored the world of Jewish involvement in the horseracing industry, racehorse ownership, racetrack gambling and the Jewish criminal underworld, British research has focused on the more respectable sports and on related attempts to gain acceptance in wider society. It is argued here that a more nuanced, balanced view is needed. Jews are often claimed by mainstream British writers to have been particularly attracted to gambling, but given the widespread popularity of betting and gambling in British society over the past two centuries this cannot be substantiated. However these mainstream representations do provide insight into the ways Jewish sports betting and related involvement has been portrayed.

The study begins with a brief exploration of Jewish religious attitudes to betting, before moving on to examine early nineteenth century working class Jewish involvement, first in betting on boxing and then on horse racing. By the 1830s and 1840s some Jews were already involved in racehorse ownership and betting. From the late 1830s a number of Jews, like others on the turf, were involved in race fixing, culminating in the notorious Running Rein scandal of 1844, orchestrated by Abraham Levi, given wide publicity, unlike earlier frauds, because of its Jewish instigators and because of Jockey Club members’ anti-Semitism.

From the 1850s onwards, wealthy, upper-class, anglicised British-born Jews began to emulate the traditional British aristocracy and gentry life-style, buying country estates and adopting country sports. For this group, racing facilitated their entry into high society. This section explores three key themes: the high spending and conspicuous consumption of the Rothschild, Joel, de Hirsch, Sassoon and Cassel families, which ensured success on the turf even though that lost money; the extent to which their involvement gained the approbation or antipathy from wider society; and the extent to which such owners also bet.

The final section explores Jewish involvement in bookmaking and racecourse crime in the period from the 1860s to 1939. The proliferation of gambling dens in Jewish communities in London, Leeds, Manchester and other cities from the 1860s was paralleled by a growth in horse race betting. In particular East End Jews were prominent in the racecourse gangs of the inter-war period, in bookmaking or in the new greyhound stadia built from the 1920s onward.

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Jean Williams - A Life less Written – The Bridge Career of Fritzi Gordon

Fritzi Gordon (1916-1992) was the Bridge partner of Rixi Markus (1910-1992) and the duo became the first and second female World Grandmasters of the game in the 1970s. Together known as 'Frisky and Bitchy' they dominated women's Bridge and participated in many open mixed tournaments world-wide between 1951 and 1976. This article develops my previous work on the subject ‘Frisky and Bitchy: Unlikely British Olympic Heroes?’ (Sport in History 30: 2, 2010 pp. 242-266) which drew mainly on the considerable number of written texts produced by Rixi Markus. The material for this work combines an oral history interview with Alice Teichova, the favourite niece of Fritzi Gordon, conducted in August 2010 and written reports of matches held at the British Bridge Association.

There are three main issues explored. Firstly, having argued that British bridge was Austrianised in both playing style and social context by Eastern European migration to London, the career of Fritzi Gordon will be analysed in terms of the conditions of her move to England from Austria in 1938. Secondly, though she was undoubtedly middle-class, Gordon was of a lower income and social standing than Markus all of her life. This defined both her place in Bridge circles and British culture until the two women died within six months of one another in 1992. Thirdly, unlike Markus she did not write. The oral testimony of her niece, herself a notable retired academic, is therefore an important insight into the way that Fritzi Gordon negotiated an international career through playing cards for a living.

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Symposium organised by the International Centre for Sport History and Culture, De Montfort University, Leicester

 

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Web: www.dmu.ac.uk/sportshistory

Twitter: @ICSHC