For most, the lustre of Tottenham’s Champions League duel with Ajax on Tuesday night lies chiefly in its rarity. Despite the richest clubs’ efforts to turn the competition into a self-perpetuating cabal, Mauricio Pochettino’s side have reached the last four despite not buying a single player in two transfer windows, while
a dazzling young Ajax team are already mould-breakers, as
the first outside Europe’s top five divisions to qualify for the semi-finals since 2005.
But the connection between them extends far beyond
their recent overachievement. This is an occasion that also derives its power from clubs’ history of a shared Jewish identity, which has created both a profound sense of common cause and, at times, some problematic issues of self-expression.
Neither Tottenham nor Ajax have any cast-iron claims to be recognised as more Jewish than the other. While Tottenham garnered the greatest support of the Eastern European immigrants who settled in the East End, Ajax’s old ground, De Meer Stadion, was nestled deep in Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter, home to Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities until the Nazi invasion of Holland in 1940.
Today, the two clubs remain the most vocal in Europe when it comes to conveying their Jewish heritage. While Tottenham are perhaps more muted than during the 1970s, when fans would wear skullcaps to home games and fly the Israeli flag from the terraces as a reaction to anti-Semitic abuse, Ajax wear their lineage with a fierce pride. Supporters have taken to calling themselves “Superjews”, and to striking up refrains of
En wie niet springt die is geen Jood (“whoever doesn’t jump isn’t a Jew”). For a time,
Hava Nagila, the popular Israeli folk song, could be downloaded from the Ajax website as an official ringtone.
At Ajax, fans’ belligerent self-labelling as Jews has troubling dimensions. For some, it seems less a badge of true honour than a defence mechanism: for decades, Ajax have been taunted as Jews by those who despise them, not least Feyenoord’s ultras, prompting the subjects of such hate to take up the chants themselves.
n 2013, Nirit Peled, the Israeli-Dutch filmmaker, released a documentary exploring this complexity. When she arrived to live in Amsterdam at the age of 20, her father encouraged her to conceal her Star of David necklace so that nobody would know she was Jewish. As such, her first reaction to hearing a tram-load of Ajax disciples screaming “Jews, Jews!” was one of horror. In one scene at the Johan Cruyff Arena, where she sits among the fans, she is the only person not engaging in the usual tribal songs. So, who is the real Jew here? Amir Vodka, a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam, points to the wisdom of philosopher Jacques Derrida. “He said, ‘The more you break up self-identity, the more you are saying, ‘My self-identity consists of not being identical to myself, of being foreign.”
Tottenham fans’ assertions of Jewishness have courted similar controversy, rooted in vexed disputes around the reappropriation of language. David Baddiel, the Jewish author and comedian, has publicly condemned
their fondness for calling themselves “Yids”. Not only did the expression have clear racist connotations, he argued – it was used liberally by the bigoted, West Ham-supporting Alf Garnett in
Till Death Us Do Part (ironically, the actor playing him, Warren Mitchell, was a season ticketholder at White Hart Lane) – but it had been co-opted by people with no Jewish roots. By some estimates, no more than five per cent of Tottenham’s fan base is Jewish.
This is not quite the full story, however. Although the Football Association, taking up what it termed the “Y-word debate”, declared in 2013 that “the use of ‘yid’ is likely to be considered offensive by the reasonable observer”, indignant Tottenham supporters found an unlikely ally in David Cameron. “There’s a difference between Spurs self-describing as ‘Yids’ and someone calling another ‘Yid’ as an insult,” the then prime minister said. “You have to be motivated by hate.” Six years on, the cries of “Yid Army” endure.
It is a precarious state of affairs. For all that an Ajax crowd might proclaim adoration of the Jews, rivals will often resort to vile anti-Semitic taunts in response. Earlier this year, a small number of ADO Den Haag fans defaced De Dokwerker statue in Amsterdam, which stands as a reminder of the day the city came together to protest against anti-Semitic laws imposed on its Jewish citizens by the Germans. The monument was defaced with green and yellow graffiti, while swastikas were painted in nearby streets.
One school of thought holds that the borrowing of Jewish symbols by non-Jews is giving rise to some of the most explicit and incendiary examples of anti-Semitic speech in Europe. “Anti-Semitism in the stadiums has allowed the hate songs to seep gradually into society at large,” says Manfred Gerstenfeld, a fellow at the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs.
While fans might not be acting with malicious intentions, there is a sense that their behaviour is giving their adversaries an alibi, an outlet for vicious intolerance towards people who have nothing to do with football.
And yet at Tottenham, the narratives of football and Jewishness are intimately interwoven. As the writer Anthony Clavane has documented, the game would serve in the early 20th century as an essential vehicle for anglicisation, a means for Jews who had fled the Russian pogroms to be accepted and assimilated in their adopted land. Somehow, football was one pastime that could coexist happily with ancient customs. A correspondent wrote to
The Jewish Chronicle of a typical Saturday kick-off at 2.30pm: “It was possible to be in synagogue until the end of musaf, to nip home for a lokshen soup, and then board a tram from Aldgate to White Hart Lane.”
At many levels, the ties that bind Tottenham and Ajax are strong. Just look at the make-up of Pochettino’s team: Jan Vertonghen, Davinson Sanchez, Toby Alderweireld and Christian Eriksen all initially made their names in Ajax colours. Indeed, ever since Edgar Davids was signed on transfer deadline day in August 2005, Tottenham have been first in line to prise products from the Ajax academy. The clubs’ mutual affection can be traced back even further, to the days when Tottenham’s travelling band rioted at Ajax’s loathed enemies, Feyenoord.
On Tuesday, their relationship enters its latest phase, as they vie for the priceless prize of a spot in the Champions League final. It will be an evening rich with symbolism. For behind the ferocity of the football contest, these clubs are united by bonds of faith, and by a long, tortured battle to belong.
