I haven't blogged in ages. No excuses. Anyway to get myself into the mood, I am posting here an article that I wrote for the Fighting Cock website (needless to say it's a Spurs thing) about the use of the word Yids by Spurs fans. This followed some comments made on the Fighting Cock podcast about it. It sparked off many positive reaction on the site actually. Enjoy
Well, firstly, I suppose that I should present the
credentials that make me qualified to pass judgement on the subject of whether
or not it is permissible for Spurs fans to use the word “Yid” in reference to
themselves or Spurs players. I am Jewish, not only through birth, but through
practise as well and, in addition, I have been a Spurs fan for over 40 years.
(I am old enough to have lived through a Tottenham championship year; albeit I
was only 3 months old when Danny Blanchflower was awarded the trophy.) I left England over 30 years ago to live in
Israel, yet Spurs have been the one constant in my life. I have always managed
to keep up with the goings on at White Hart Lane. For years this wasn’t so easy
but the onset of the Internet and of satellite TV has meant that I rarely miss
a game during the season and I get together with other long-suffering ex-pat
fans to watch almost every week.
I have brought up two sons to
suffer alongside me and I am proud of the fact that despite the fact that the
past decade and a half have been rather barren for the mighty THFC, they
resisted the temptation to support other more successful teams as Israeli kids
are wont to do and that my youngest son who is now almost 16 has even influenced
some of his mates to follow the Tottenham. My proudest moment was when I was
able to take them to see Spurs when they came to Israel to play Hapoel Tel Aviv
in the UEFA Cup a few years back. (I also have 2 girls, but I couldn’t persuade
them to like football.) My American-born wife has learnt to be patient with my
obsession. As she has put it on a number of occasions, if supporting Spurs is
my worst vice, then she has got herself a pretty good deal.
I recall that my first encounter with anti-Semitism
on a personal level came when I was about 9 or 10 years old. As one does at
that age, I was playing in a pick-up football game in the local park with kids
whom I didn’t know. I have to admit that I loved playing the game but being a
bit of a chubby kid at the time (my mum assured me it was “puppy fat”), what I
lacked in footballing prowess, I more than made up for in clumsy enthusiasm.
And eventually I hacked another player down in a move that would have made
Terry “the Meathook” Naylor proud.
As the kid fell, he exclaimed “You Jew!” I must have
been fairly naïve at the time, and anyway the word “Jew” had not been preceded
by an adjective such as “bloody” or “effing”, so it did not strike me that he
was insulting me. My response was to turn around pleasantly and say simply “Oh,
how did you know?” I was quite astonished as there were no outward signs of my
Mosaic ancestry. This seemed to take the kid by surprise. “Oh are you?” he said
quite embarrassed, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” It was if he had called me a
bastard and I had turned round and admitted to my parents’ having borne me out
of wedlock. I thought little of it and carried on charging around the pitch
trying to make as much of a nuisance of myself as possible, which was my main
football strategy at the time.
It was only later that it dawned on me that he was
using the word, “Jew” as an insult. I knew all about anti-Semitism; my mother
had been through the Holocaust before finding refuge in England after the war
and my father and his family had managed to leave Germany in 1933 after the
Nazis came to power. However, this was the first time I had heard the word that
I had been brought up to be proud of used in a pejorative sense. The kid I had
fouled probably had no idea what it meant, and as at that time we did not live
in a neighbourhood where there was a large Jewish community, chances are that I
was the first Red-Sea Pedestrian that he had met in his life. The boy had most
probably picked it up from the Alf Garnetts who were bringing him up.
The word “Yid” I would hear used as an insult
against me several years later when I was about 14. I went to a large Jewish
school which was then situated in Camden Town, quite a rough area at the time in
which very few Jews lived. To make life hard for my friends and me, and easy
for the local yobbos, our uniforms were bright blue with a luminous yellow
badge whilst all the other schools in the neighbourhood wore black blazers. We
were spotted from a mile off making our way down to the station in our attempt
to make it to the safety of North-West London and every week there incidents in
which pupils from my school were insulted or attacked.
I knew the word as the Yiddish for Jew. I had a good
working knowledge of the language as my Rumanian born grandmother would speak
to me in Yiddish although I would reply in English. I was old enough to realise
instantly that I was being insulted, but again I was a bit puzzled as to what
could be so derogatory about a word which described a member of the faith that
I was quite prepared to admit adhering to.
Perhaps because I didn’t get much of a chance to go
to games during the hooligan-ridden ‘70’s, I wasn’t aware of Spurs’ supposed
Jewish connections. I knew lots of Jewish people that supported them, but then
again, most of the people that I knew were Jewish and I assumed that they were
Spurs fans because they came from North London, and anyway I knew as many fans
of the Team Whose Name Must Never Be Uttered and even a couple of Chelsea
supporters who were Jewish.
I had to rely not only on highlights on the “Big
Match” and “Match of the Day” for my football fix, but on the weekly reports of
my mate, Brian who was a regular at Spurs matches. In this way I lived
vicariously the life of a proper Spurs fan as he would regale me at school on
Monday mornings with blow-by-blow (often literally) accounts of the goings-on
on the terraces which were far more entertaining than what was happening on the
pitch at the time. These were Spurs’ wilderness years during which they went
down to the second division after having flirted with relegation for a number
of seasons. The truth is that I can’t remember any tales about Spurs fans being
singled out because of the team’s supposed “Jewish connections”. Perhaps it got
lost in the general wave of hooliganism that was rampant at the time. Even so,
today this seems strange to me as Brian himself was Jewish.
I only became aware of the anti-Semitic jibes
against Spurs fans in the early 1980’s, after I had already moved to Israel. English
football has always been popular here and the reports of rival fans making
hissing sounds and singing songs about Auschwitz
aroused much interest in the Israeli media for obvious reasons. What also
became apparent at the same time was the fact that instead of lashing out
against the accusation of their being “Jewish”, Spurs fans had reacted quite
unexpectedly by embracing it.
The term, “Yid”, so long used in a derogatory way,
suddenly became the name used by Spurs fans to denote not only themselves but
the Spurs players as well. There were more Israeli flags being waved at White Hart Lane
than at games of the Israeli national side (the Jewish state had been
considerate enough, on its achieving independence in 1948, to choose blue and
white for the colours of its flag.) My chest would well up with pride whenever
I was asked by Israelis which team I supported. “Ah, the Jewish team,” they
would say when I told them. All of sudden, the two main components of my own
identity, which for so long had been kept separate, had been fused together. I
was Jewish ergo I was a Spurs fan (or was it the other way round?)
I wasn’t even bothered when I heard the word “Yiddo”
used against me in Israel.
It was in 1984 in
Ramat Gan near
Tel Aviv, where the national stadium is situated. England had come out to play a
friendly against the Israeli national side. My mates and I had brought Israeli
flags to cheer on the local team and we got into a mock terrace battle with a
couple of half-pissed non-Jewish England fans before the game (it was the 80’s
after all and we probably regarded it as mandatory and anyway we had also had
our own fill of the Demon Drink as well.) Eventually, we settled down and began
chatting to the two blokes who, it turned out were working as volunteers on a
kibbutz. We were having a friendly conversation when suddenly one of them
noticed my Spurs scarf which I was wearing. “Oy,” he said, “You’re a Yid,” and
began singing a song about my being “a poor little Yiddo.” I was a bit perplexed as it was fairly obvious
that I was Jewish, yet it was only the sight of my scarf that had caused him to
start singing. His mate looked a trifle embarrassed and nudged him to get him
to stop. The guy suddenly realised what he was doing, stopped and apologised. I
told him not to worry about it. It was apparent that the jibe was directed
against me as I was a Tottenham fan which, as he supported a rival team, he was
entitled to do, rather than because I was Jewish, something that would have
been unacceptable.
In spite of all this, I can fully understand the
objections of the English Jewish community to the use of the words, “Yid” and
“Yiddo.” I wonder if I were still living in England, whether this would bother
me as much. However, it must be pointed out that even if all Spurs fans were to
cease using the names to describe themselves, it is impossible to imagine that
rival fans would stop using them as terms of abuse. What Spurs supporters have
done in effect is to take the sting out these words. How can they be used as
anti-Semitic jibes when tens of thousands of Gentiles are employing them
regularly as the supreme accolade used to describe not only a loyal fan, but
also a favourite player who has proved himself to the crowd? If anything, Spurs
fans should be commended for deflecting the derogatory meaning of the words.
And before anyone brings up the example of the
nefarious “N-word”, I feel that there is no basis here for comparison as for
African-Americans, this term symbolizes the worst periods of their history. Many
names have been invented to denote Jews, some of which are merely corruptions
of the word “Jew”, as the ineffable “N-word” is merely a corruption of the
word, “Negro.” But I don’t think that one particular word can be singled out as
the most offensive. In fact, I would hazard a guess that “Zhid” and “Jude”,
respectively the Russian and German words for Jew, evoke many more bitter
memories than the word “Yid” does.
David Baddiel’s efforts to eradicate the use of the
“Y-word” (as he calls it) by Spurs fans are both laughable and hypocritical.
Baddiel has made a whole career out of the fact that he is Jewish. I don’t
think that I have seen one appearance of his in which he does not mention his
ethnicity at least once. In addition, for years, he has perpetuated the myth
that Spurs are a Jewish club.
(Just check out this clip on his “Fantasy Football”show from the mid-90’s -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvf9gDExvng).
More recently, he wrote and produced a mildly amusing comedy film called “The
Infidel” in which he presents Jews in a stereotypical way (stemming from his
own ignorance about Judaism.) The rather implausible plot involves a Muslim man
who discovers he is Jewish. The point is that Baddiel makes the protagonist a
Spurs fan, and the opening scene features the main character wearing a 1980’s
Spurs shirt. Perhaps Baddiel was trying to suggest that even before the hero
discovers his Jewish roots he was in possession of basic Jewish genetic traits,
such as supporting Tottenham.
As long as
someone as well-known as Baddiel and others continue to portray Spurs as a
“Jewish” club, then the anti-Semitic insults hurled at its supporters will
continue. The best thing to do in this case is precisely what Spurs fans have
been doing for the past 30 years or so i.e. to turn the insult into a term of
endearment. This renders harmless the shouts of “Yids!” by rival fans. Of
course, it doesn’t deal with the more caustic chants referring to the Holocaust
which emanate from the sick and pig-ignorant supporters who also sing songs
about the tragedies at Munich and Hillsboro against Manchester United and
Liverpool fans respectively.
Unfortunately, abusive chanting will always be part
and parcel of football matches. One cannot expect every member of a crowd that
can number between 30-50,000 to be on his or her best behaviour during a tense
game and adhere strictly to the rules of political correctness. The only way to
deal with it has to be to punish clubs whose fans are particularly abusive
(this actually has been done in Israel where teams have had points deducted for
racist chanting from their fans.) Spurs fans referring to themselves as
“Yiddos” cannot be regarded in this category, even though it does make many
members of the English Jewish community uncomfortable.
Well, firstly, I suppose that I should present the
credentials that make me qualified to pass judgement on the subject of whether
or not it is permissible for Spurs fans to use the word “Yid” in reference to
themselves or Spurs players. I am Jewish, not only through birth, but through
practise as well and, in addition, I have been a Spurs fan for over 40 years.
(I am old enough to have lived through a Tottenham championship year; albeit I
was only 3 months old when Danny Blanchflower was awarded the trophy.) I left England over 30 years ago to live in
Israel, yet Spurs have been the one constant in my life. I have always managed
to keep up with the goings on at White Hart Lane. For years this wasn’t so easy
but the onset of the Internet and of satellite TV has meant that I rarely miss
a game during the season and I get together with other long-suffering ex-pat
fans to watch almost every week.
I have brought up two sons to
suffer alongside me and I am proud of the fact that despite the fact that the
past decade and a half have been rather barren for the mighty THFC, they
resisted the temptation to support other more successful teams as Israeli kids
are wont to do and that my youngest son who is now almost 16 has even influenced
some of his mates to follow the Tottenham. My proudest moment was when I was
able to take them to see Spurs when they came to Israel to play Hapoel Tel Aviv
in the UEFA Cup a few years back. (I also have 2 girls, but I couldn’t persuade
them to like football.) My American-born wife has learnt to be patient with my
obsession. As she has put it on a number of occasions, if supporting Spurs is
my worst vice, then she has got herself a pretty good deal.
I recall that my first encounter with anti-Semitism
on a personal level came when I was about 9 or 10 years old. As one does at
that age, I was playing in a pick-up football game in the local park with kids
whom I didn’t know. I have to admit that I loved playing the game but being a
bit of a chubby kid at the time (my mum assured me it was “puppy fat”), what I
lacked in footballing prowess, I more than made up for in clumsy enthusiasm.
And eventually I hacked another player down in a move that would have made
Terry “the Meathook” Naylor proud.
As the kid fell, he exclaimed “You Jew!” I must have
been fairly naïve at the time, and anyway the word “Jew” had not been preceded
by an adjective such as “bloody” or “effing”, so it did not strike me that he
was insulting me. My response was to turn around pleasantly and say simply “Oh,
how did you know?” I was quite astonished as there were no outward signs of my
Mosaic ancestry. This seemed to take the kid by surprise. “Oh are you?” he said
quite embarrassed, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” It was if he had called me a
bastard and I had turned round and admitted to my parents’ having borne me out
of wedlock. I thought little of it and carried on charging around the pitch
trying to make as much of a nuisance of myself as possible, which was my main
football strategy at the time.
It was only later that it dawned on me that he was
using the word, “Jew” as an insult. I knew all about anti-Semitism; my mother
had been through the Holocaust before finding refuge in England after the war
and my father and his family had managed to leave Germany in 1933 after the
Nazis came to power. However, this was the first time I had heard the word that
I had been brought up to be proud of used in a pejorative sense. The kid I had
fouled probably had no idea what it meant, and as at that time we did not live
in a neighbourhood where there was a large Jewish community, chances are that I
was the first Red-Sea Pedestrian that he had met in his life. The boy had most
probably picked it up from the Alf Garnetts who were bringing him up.
The word “Yid” I would hear used as an insult
against me several years later when I was about 14. I went to a large Jewish
school which was then situated in Camden Town, quite a rough area at the time in
which very few Jews lived. To make life hard for my friends and me, and easy
for the local yobbos, our uniforms were bright blue with a luminous yellow
badge whilst all the other schools in the neighbourhood wore black blazers. We
were spotted from a mile off making our way down to the station in our attempt
to make it to the safety of North-West London and every week there incidents in
which pupils from my school were insulted or attacked.
I knew the word as the Yiddish for Jew. I had a good
working knowledge of the language as my Rumanian born grandmother would speak
to me in Yiddish although I would reply in English. I was old enough to realise
instantly that I was being insulted, but again I was a bit puzzled as to what
could be so derogatory about a word which described a member of the faith that
I was quite prepared to admit adhering to.
Perhaps because I didn’t get much of a chance to go
to games during the hooligan-ridden ‘70’s, I wasn’t aware of Spurs’ supposed
Jewish connections. I knew lots of Jewish people that supported them, but then
again, most of the people that I knew were Jewish and I assumed that they were
Spurs fans because they came from North London, and anyway I knew as many fans
of the Team Whose Name Must Never Be Uttered and even a couple of Chelsea
supporters who were Jewish.
I had to rely not only on highlights on the “Big
Match” and “Match of the Day” for my football fix, but on the weekly reports of
my mate, Brian who was a regular at Spurs matches. In this way I lived
vicariously the life of a proper Spurs fan as he would regale me at school on
Monday mornings with blow-by-blow (often literally) accounts of the goings-on
on the terraces which were far more entertaining than what was happening on the
pitch at the time. These were Spurs’ wilderness years during which they went
down to the second division after having flirted with relegation for a number
of seasons. The truth is that I can’t remember any tales about Spurs fans being
singled out because of the team’s supposed “Jewish connections”. Perhaps it got
lost in the general wave of hooliganism that was rampant at the time. Even so,
today this seems strange to me as Brian himself was Jewish.
I only became aware of the anti-Semitic jibes
against Spurs fans in the early 1980’s, after I had already moved to Israel. English
football has always been popular here and the reports of rival fans making
hissing sounds and singing songs about Auschwitz
aroused much interest in the Israeli media for obvious reasons. What also
became apparent at the same time was the fact that instead of lashing out
against the accusation of their being “Jewish”, Spurs fans had reacted quite
unexpectedly by embracing it.
The term, “Yid”, so long used in a derogatory way,
suddenly became the name used by Spurs fans to denote not only themselves but
the Spurs players as well. There were more Israeli flags being waved at White Hart Lane
than at games of the Israeli national side (the Jewish state had been
considerate enough, on its achieving independence in 1948, to choose blue and
white for the colours of its flag.) My chest would well up with pride whenever
I was asked by Israelis which team I supported. “Ah, the Jewish team,” they
would say when I told them. All of sudden, the two main components of my own
identity, which for so long had been kept separate, had been fused together. I
was Jewish ergo I was a Spurs fan (or was it the other way round?)
I wasn’t even bothered when I heard the word “Yiddo”
used against me in Israel.
It was in 1984 in
Ramat Gan near
Tel Aviv, where the national stadium is situated. England had come out to play a
friendly against the Israeli national side. My mates and I had brought Israeli
flags to cheer on the local team and we got into a mock terrace battle with a
couple of half-pissed non-Jewish England fans before the game (it was the 80’s
after all and we probably regarded it as mandatory and anyway we had also had
our own fill of the Demon Drink as well.) Eventually, we settled down and began
chatting to the two blokes who, it turned out were working as volunteers on a
kibbutz. We were having a friendly conversation when suddenly one of them
noticed my Spurs scarf which I was wearing. “Oy,” he said, “You’re a Yid,” and
began singing a song about my being “a poor little Yiddo.” I was a bit perplexed as it was fairly obvious
that I was Jewish, yet it was only the sight of my scarf that had caused him to
start singing. His mate looked a trifle embarrassed and nudged him to get him
to stop. The guy suddenly realised what he was doing, stopped and apologised. I
told him not to worry about it. It was apparent that the jibe was directed
against me as I was a Tottenham fan which, as he supported a rival team, he was
entitled to do, rather than because I was Jewish, something that would have
been unacceptable.
In spite of all this, I can fully understand the
objections of the English Jewish community to the use of the words, “Yid” and
“Yiddo.” I wonder if I were still living in England, whether this would bother
me as much. However, it must be pointed out that even if all Spurs fans were to
cease using the names to describe themselves, it is impossible to imagine that
rival fans would stop using them as terms of abuse. What Spurs supporters have
done in effect is to take the sting out these words. How can they be used as
anti-Semitic jibes when tens of thousands of Gentiles are employing them
regularly as the supreme accolade used to describe not only a loyal fan, but
also a favourite player who has proved himself to the crowd? If anything, Spurs
fans should be commended for deflecting the derogatory meaning of the words.
And before anyone brings up the example of the
nefarious “N-word”, I feel that there is no basis here for comparison as for
African-Americans, this term symbolizes the worst periods of their history. Many
names have been invented to denote Jews, some of which are merely corruptions
of the word “Jew”, as the ineffable “N-word” is merely a corruption of the
word, “Negro.” But I don’t think that one particular word can be singled out as
the most offensive. In fact, I would hazard a guess that “Zhid” and “Jude”,
respectively the Russian and German words for Jew, evoke many more bitter
memories than the word “Yid” does.
David Baddiel’s efforts to eradicate the use of the
“Y-word” (as he calls it) by Spurs fans are both laughable and hypocritical.
Baddiel has made a whole career out of the fact that he is Jewish. I don’t
think that I have seen one appearance of his in which he does not mention his
ethnicity at least once. In addition, for years, he has perpetuated the myth
that Spurs are a Jewish club. (Just check out this clip on his “Fantasy Football”
show from the mid-90’s --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvf9gDExvng).
More recently, he wrote and produced a mildly amusing comedy film called “The
Infidel” in which he presents Jews in a stereotypical way (stemming from his
own ignorance about Judaism.) The rather implausible plot involves a Muslim man
who discovers he is Jewish. The point is that Baddiel makes the protagonist a
Spurs fan, and the opening scene features the main character wearing a 1980’s
Spurs shirt. Perhaps Baddiel was trying to suggest that even before the hero
discovers his Jewish roots he was in possession of basic Jewish genetic traits,
such as supporting Tottenham.
As long as
someone as well-known as Baddiel and others continue to portray Spurs as a
“Jewish” club, then the anti-Semitic insults hurled at its supporters will
continue. The best thing to do in this case is precisely what Spurs fans have
been doing for the past 30 years or so i.e. to turn the insult into a term of
endearment. This renders harmless the shouts of “Yids!” by rival fans. Of
course, it doesn’t deal with the more caustic chants referring to the Holocaust
which emanate from the sick and pig-ignorant supporters who also sing songs
about the tragedies at Munich and Hillsboro against Manchester United and
Liverpool fans respectively.
Unfortunately, abusive chanting will always be part
and parcel of football matches. One cannot expect every member of a crowd that
can number between 30-50,000 to be on his or her best behaviour during a tense
game and adhere strictly to the rules of political correctness. The only way to
deal with it has to be to punish clubs whose fans are particularly abusive
(this actually has been done in Israel where teams have had points deducted for
racist chanting from their fans.) Spurs fans referring to themselves as
“Yiddos” cannot be regarded in this category, even though it does make many
members of the English Jewish community uncomfortable.
