Sport and Globalization in London & Seville

Our group took a day trip over to the Jewish Museum to check out its 4-4-Jew exhibit. The museum houses a lot of interesting information about the Jewish culture and religion. For our purposes, the top floor exhibit was most relevant. Here, there was an entire space dedicated to the story of Jewish soccer in England. It looked at the stories of players, teams, managers, fans, and other Jewish immigrants in England connected to the sport of soccer. The museum highlighted Jewish only teams as well as famous Jewish players and clubs, such as Tottenham Hotspur FC--the very same club we watched live and of which we visited the youth academy. It was especially interesting to learn how the historically Jewish club adopted the racist term, "Yid or Yiddo," and created their own chants and songs such as "Yid Army" to deflect the taunts. Overall, it was fantastic to see the ways in which sport can allow a new group of people, like the Jews in England, to assimilate and become a part of society. Few things in the world can do so in such a simple and natural fashion.