Sport and British Jewry: Integration, Ethnicity and Anti-Semitism 1890-1970 by David Dee (review)

In the 1980 movie Airplane!, the flight attendant asks an elderly lady if she would like any reading. The passenger responds, asking if she has anything light, to which the flight attendant answers: “How about this leaflet, famous Jewish sports legends.” Jokes about the lack of Jewish sporting prowess have abounded for decades, spawning celebratory literature promoting the involvement of Jewish athletes. David Dee’s Sport and British Jewry: Integration, Ethnicity and Anti-Semitism 1890-1970 is not that type of book; instead, Dee traces “the effect that sport had on British Jews, rather than on the impact that Jews had on British sport” (p. 6). Combining archival records from individuals and organizations, government files, oral histories, and popular press accounts, Dee skillfully demonstrates the centrality of sport to Jewish integration and to combating anti-Semitism in modern Britain.

Dee divides his study into three chapters: integration and Anglicization, religion and ethnicity, and anti-Semitism. As thousands of Eastern European Jews arrived in Great Britain between 1880 and 1914, both the local population and more established British Jews created organizations, often focused on youth, which facilitated the integration of this visible minority. Dee highlights organizations such as the Jewish Lads’ Brigade, modeled on the Church Lads’ Brigade, which used sport to help turn “working-class and foreign youth into fit and respectable Englishmen of the Mosaic Persuasion” (p. 21). As the number of Jewish athletic teams increased, many of them formed the Jewish Athletic Association to overcome the difficulties of scheduling competition on the Jewish Sabbath and the restrictions for using facilities on Sundays (p. 48). Jewish organizations viewed competition against non-Jewish teams favorably because it helped combat anti-Semitism demonstrating, through successes in sport and displays of good sportsmanship, that Jews were suitable for integration into British life (p. 42). Because most Jewish immigrants settled in the same urban areas, sport was viewed by Jews and non-Jews alike as a way to “iron out the ghetto bend,” and physical education was also added to the curriculum at Jewish schools (p. 24).

In contrast to the integration and Anglicization efforts, which were directed with a clear goal, the growth of sport within the British Jewish community had a more haphazard impact on Jewish identity, which Dee explores in chapter two. Individuals selectively chose which religious rules they felt did not conflict with their sporting activities. Some Jews purchased season passes so they could attend professional football games on Saturdays without having to worry about money changing hands on the Sabbath (p. 101). The sport of boxing also became a venue that fractured Jewish identity, dividing younger Jews—who experienced success in the ring and enjoyed spectating—from the more religious older generation (p. 111). Jewish boxers, themselves often non-religious, nonetheless frequently wore the Star of David on their boxing shorts in the ring (p.114).

Dee’s third chapter focuses on anti-Semitism in sport. In the 1930s the British Union of Fascists (BUF) adopted an anti-Semitic stance in its political platform, frequently invoking sport to reinforce the alien nature of Jews. The BUF claimed Jews were “un-sporting” and did not value sport as the British did (p.170), yet they also argued that Jewish dominance in sports such as boxing demonstrated “Jewish otherness and supposed racial difference” (p. 163). In addition to the public proclamations of the BUF, Jews also faced a more subtle “anti-Semitism of exclusion” practiced by private organizations (p. 174). As Jewish social mobility increased, particularly after World War I, many Jews attempted to join golf clubs but were often denied membership. Golf publications perpetuated the stereotype of the “flashy” and “unsporting” Jew (pp. 176-179) who was unsuitable for membership, while clubs imposed a quota to limit Jewish membership or else “blackballed” individual Jews (p. 182). In response to this anti-Semitism, Dee notes, many Jews...