About ninety minutes before kickoff on a recent Saturday, Guy Morris sped through traffic near the northwest edge of the city on his way to an important game. Munching on an apple as he wove his way toward the field, Morris considered what seemed to be a relatively simple question: Just how Jewish is London’s all-Jewish soccer team?
“Put it this way,” he said as he pulled into the parking lot. “We don’t keep kosher. But we do sometimes celebrate a big win with a horah and some dancing.”
For years, there has been a perception that Tottenham Hotspur, the Premier League team whose fans sometimes refer to themselves as the Yid Army, stands apart as the so-called Jewish soccer club of London. But such a label is badly outdated.
While the Spurs’ roster (not to mention global fan base) now includes ethnicities of all kinds, the true Jewish team of the capital is in the borough of Barnet on the northern outskirts of the city, where the London Maccabi Lions play, and host community dinners, and bar mitzvah parties, at the quaint facilities of Rowley Lane.
The Lions, who compete in the tenth level of English soccer’s 24-tier system, are different from the Spurs— and, really, most other clubs— in a number of ways, starting with their restriction on who is allowed to play for them: by rule, all players on each of the club’s numerous teams must be Jewish.
So what makes someone Jewish? The answer is that the club has no rigorous set of rules; it instead trusts that if someone considers himself Jewish, then he is, whether or not he grew up with any religious training.
There are about 285,000 Jews in England, according to the 2011 census, and roughly two-thirds of them are said to live in or around London. The Lions were initially known as Maccabi Association London, and played in a Sunday league with other Jewish teams, but changed their name before the 2000 season when the club decided to enter into England’s more formal soccer structure.
At that time, there was some resistance from leaders of Britain’s Maccabi Union, who said it was not appropriate for the team to continue using the Maccabi name if it was going to play on Saturdays (the Jewish Sabbath), as is customary for most leagues in England. Club management considered several alternatives, and ultimately settled on Lions as a tribute to the lion of Judah, which is a symbol of one of the biblical tribes of Israel.
Despite that liturgical connection, though, the players on the London Lions represent a wide swath of Jewish identity. The club’s success— it clinched this season’s South Midlands League Division One title with three matches to go, ensuring a promotion to the ninth level of the pyramid this fall— has attracted players from as far as Manchester (about two hundred miles away), which is particularly remarkable given that the players are unpaid. In fact, first-team players have to pay roughly £150 (about $230) to be on the roster and must juggle games and practices with the demands of their outside jobs.
That has often been the most difficult part of running the team, said Tony Gold, the team’s coach. Many players work in real estate or for headhunting firms, and some have high-level management jobs. Getting out of work for a midweek evening match becomes a challenge. “It’s our Achilles’ heel,” Gold said. “We’ll have the same team for a few games and then we’ll have nine changes. It’s difficult.”
Jewish backgrounds among the players also vary. Some players had bar mitzvahs when they were younger; others did not. Some belong to synagogues and worship regularly; others, like Morris, who is the team’s captain, grew up in split-religion households and consider their faith rooted more in spirituality than ritual. “Do I walk out on the pitch and think, this is a representation of Judaism? No, I don’t,” Morris said. “But being part of this matters. And I do feel something.”
In many ways, the Lions are representative of the larger differences— and contradictions— among groups of Jews throughout the world.
Yes, they have a Star of David on their jerseys, but during a recent game, no one wore a skullcap. Yes, they play on Saturdays, but no, they do not play on Yom Kippur. And yes, some of them adhere to the dietary laws of Passover (several players passed on cereal bars before a recent game), but no, they do not say a blessing over the wine at their postmatch parties.
“What we’re trying to do is bring in all denominations,” said David Kyte, a founder and vice president of the club. “The idea is to build a community where people feel comfortable.”
That is not always easy. Though the Lions have had tremendous success in expanding— there are 26 junior teams and seven adult teams playing under the club’s umbrella— the response from outsiders is not universally friendly. Intolerance remains a persistent problem in Europe, especially as it pertains to soccer, and Lions teams have not been immune to anti-Semitism.
Often, the worst of the incidents are in the youth games, according to Andy Landesberg, the club’s director of football. But even the first-team Lions have experienced abuse. Gold said there had been relatively few problems this season, but smiled when asked how he has instructed his players to deal with overt bigotry. “We tell them, do it on the field, don’t give in,” Gold said. “Then, afterward, when you’re shaking hands, you can say: ‘You’ve been beaten by a bunch of Jews... How do you feel now?’ ”
Beyond the scattered anti-Semitic comments, there is also the larger issue of whether an exclusive club, of any kind, should exist. The Lions are hardly the only English team with an ethnic theme— the Lions have played against teams that are predominantly Muslim or Catholic— but it is believed that no other club in the formal soccer pyramid chooses to self-impose such a rigid restriction.
In an odd twist, the Lions take criticism from both sides: recently, other Jewish clubs protested that one of the Lions’ players was not Jewish enough to play for one of the club’s teams that still participate in the all-Jewish Sunday league (the player’s registration was suspended pending verification). On the other hand, there are those who believe that, by refusing to let non-Jews join the Saturday senior team, the Lions are simply fostering another line of societal division. Even some Lions players wonder whether the message is correct. “I know some might not necessarily like hearing it, but should non-Jews be allowed to play for Lions? Maybe,” Morris said.
Kyte said that Lions executives understood the controversial element of their rules, but were committed to fostering strength among Jews through the soccer clubs. Rowley Lane is at the heart of that mission, and the ground is charming, with a number of soccer fields, a social hall and, of course, a box in the front foyer holding free copies of The Jewish News.
Support for the first team is decent. On a recent Saturday afternoon, a crowd of about thirty fans crowded into the rickety bleachers at midfield to watch the Lions play Amersham Town in a driving rainstorm with a blustery wind and frigid temperature. The play was expectedly ragged, though the Lions are one of the few teams at this level that try to keep possession and play the ball up the field on the ground.
Players slipped often. Gusts blew lofted passes awry. Everyone’s nerves were a bit frayed; at one point, the Lions’ goalkeeper, Mario Cenolli, threatened to stomp off the field after engaging in a shouting match with his teammate Sam Sloma.
Ultimately, though, Sloma and Cenolli reconciled, and Sloma scored to help secure a 2-1 victory. The team celebrated, as usual, with some drinks in the social hall.
The Lions have already become the first all-Jewish team to win a match in the F.A. Cup. Could they someday cross the coveted line of demarcation in England, and be promoted to one of the top four leagues? It is, of course, a dream. But if they ever do reach such heights, it almost surely will not be because they have changed their rules about which players can join the team, Kyte said.
“Obviously, I’m restricted because I can only pick Jewish players,” said Gold, the team’s coach. He shrugged. “But I do think,” he said, “that, in terms of Jewish players in this country, we’ve definitely got the crème de la crème.”
Rico says surely there's a better Jewish comparison; קרעם פון די גערעטעניש, maybe?
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