Ethnicizing Soccer

On Feb 23 I attended a lecture at UCLA Center for Jewish Studies:

People of the Book or People of the (Foot) Ball? Ethnicizing European and Latin American Soccer.

This sounded like such a benign subject.

The first speaker was Raanan Rein from Tel Aviv University.  He talked about soccer in Argentina.

The second speaker, John Efron a historian from UC Berkeley talked about soccer in the UK.  In London the Jews support these soccer teams: Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea.

For some reason Tottenham is considered the only “Yuden” team.  They play in the White Hart Lane stadium.

He described the chanting in the stadium in a scary manner.  Imagine a drum beat and the sound of 40,000 men chanting: YID, YID,  YID, YID,  YID, YID.  This chantings goes on for 90 minutes!

He had a video taken on a London train of a group of men singing:

I got foreskin

I got foreskin

Don’t have you?

Fucking Jew!

The worst chant is the sound of hissing, sssssssssssssss  imitating the sound of gas in the gas chambers.

In the following discussion the differences between the US and  Europe were pointed out: America society is quite violent with many guns everywhere.  At the football stadium people are “better behaved.”  European societies are not as violent, the violence erupts in the football stadiums.  

About the speakers:

John M. Efron (UC Berkeley)

While most historians would agree as to the centrality of sports in general and of soccer in particular in Latin American societies, very little has been written on ethnicity and sports in such immigrant societies as Argentina and Brazil. As far as the historiography of the Jewish experience in Latin America is concerned, hardly any scholarly works exist that are devoted to popular culture, particularly that of unaffiliated Jews.

Raanan Rein examines Argentine football as a space of both prejudice and dialogue. Rein argues that for the first immigrant generation, belonging to this club was a way of becoming Argentines. For the next generation, it was a way of maintaining ethnic Jewish identity, while for the third it has become a family tradition.

Raanan Rein