“For centuries the Jewish race in Britain has absorbed British culture ... But not all connect Jews with any marked leanings towards our own national amateur sports and pastimes” [Leeds Mercury, 1926, “The Jew as Amateur Sportsmen”]
Statements like these can be found manifold in English newspapers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. While Anglo-Jewry grew significantly during these decades, so did the press reporting – in general as well as regarding coverage of Jewish athletes and sports. Articles about “the Jew” in sports can be found in mainstream newspapers like the Daily Mail, local publications such as the Leeds Mercury, far-right propaganda papers by the British Union of Fascists and, on the opposite pole of the discursive spectrum, the Jewish Chronicle. At the heart of this societal discourse was the notion of the “unsportive Jew”, rhetorically creating an outgroup in a society that closely interconnected values and norms with sports. The discourse and its social impact were complex. With some rare exceptions, the depiction of Jewish athletes and sports in mainstream newspapers was seldom openly hostile or derogatory. These underlying notions were covered behind an apparent civility. However, a close analysis reveals a net of interwoven narratives, racialisations and stereotypes about Jews that diachronically evolved over decades and were transferred onto the realm of sports with its physical as well as cultural connotations. The discourse was by no means solely focused on physicality and physical activity but was strongly impacted by the normative nature ascribed to English sports. This is not surprising since sport was considered inherently “British” based on the norms and values associated with it. The continuous discursive depiction of Jews as an outgroup in a social realm that had distinctly nationalised connotations, abetted the perception of Jews as an outgroup beyond sports and placed them outside the “imagined community” of English (sports) society.
Lisa Jenkel is a PhD student at the University of Basel in Switzerland and a curator at the FC St. Pauli-Museum in Hamburg, Germany. Her research is located at the intersection of sports history with Jewish and Women’s studies. Employing discourse analytical methods, she examines the cultural and societal influence sport had on these groups and vice versa. Lisa has recently finished her thesis on Anglo-Jewish sports history, the content of which will be presented in this seminar.
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