A personal reflection on antisemitism, family traditions and why Passover still resonates – football clashes, matzah and all
During my time at university, I was shocked to learn that a certain method of scoring on FIFA was referred to as a “Jew goal”. This term was, and presumably still is, used when a player going one-on-one with the goalkeeper squares the ball to a teammate with an open goal. Such a tactic is viewed by some as a cheap way to score, and thus, even playing football simulation video games can be given an antisemitic twist. If you will it, it is no dream.
When I told a Jewish friend from school about this, he interrupted before I had explained the reasoning with the suggestion that it must be because the goal involves a “passover”. His youthful innocence seems more naïve as the years pass, and one suspects it is not a mistake anyone would make in 2026. Not many Gentiles are paying tribute to any of the three pilgrimage festivals while having a PlayStation session.
This year, for a variety of reasons, will be the first since Covid that my parents have not hosted a Seder. The answer, then, as it was with most things during that strange period, was a remote option. My infant son was excited about his first Seder, and whether or not it was via video link seemed immaterial. He summed things up about fifteen minutes in with the loud declaration, “This isn’t as fun as I thought it would be.”
As a lapsed Jew, this eliminates one of the handful of occasions in a calendar year on which I wear a yarmulke and has led me to ruminate on what Pesach has meant to me. It is a commemoration of liberation from slavery in Egypt that goes heavy on the symbolism and light on the subtext. Bitter herbs represent, well, bitterness while salt water symbolises tears. Let’s not forget the reason Jews break glass at weddings is not just because it’s an easy shorthand in feature films but because it reminds us of the destruction of the temple thousands of years ago, the idea being that even at the most joyous moments, we should not forget the pain of life. What could be more Jewish than that?
In our family, the older generation does the Hebrew bits while the rest of us read aloud in English and try to avoid sniggering at the repeated references to “bondage”. The biggest issue in years gone by has been the tendency for the first night to coincide with epochal football matches.
In April 2003, when Arsenal’s and Manchester United’s top-of-the-table clash looked set to define the season, my family boldly attempted to combine it with Pesach festivities. My grandfather, having none of it, uttered the immortal sentence, “Or we’re watching the football or we’re doing Pesach.” He won the ensuing battle of wills. We dutifully did Pesach and then stayed up until the early hours watching a recording of the game. Why we couldn’t have recorded the Seder and watched that after the match, I’ll never know.
As a man with more of a cultural than religious affinity to Judaism, the Passover Seder can be a strange experience. It seems, like most of the festivals, to draw on centuries of persecution. We are forced to eat food that is slightly more expensive but significantly less good than that which we’d normally have. Anyone who has ever eaten unleavened bread for a week straight and observed the effect on their digestive system will know that it does as good a job as any of hammering home the horrors outlined in the Book of Exodus.
And yet I will miss it this year, in every sense. Pesach for me is just Judaism in microcosm and thus not about the vengeful wrath of the Old Testament deity but the stuff of life. It’s about going to my parents’ and being labelled “Shakespeare” for having a prayer book edited by novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. It’s about the sheer insanity of having a kosher Passover Diet Coke. It’s about my dad insisting that the Pesach ketchup is “actually better than the normal stuff”. It’s about family and tradition and people getting told off for checking football scores on their phones.
Next year, not in Jerusalem but, all being well, in Radlett. Hopefully, there will be a seat waiting for me next to Elijah, and United won’t be playing that night.
- Darren Richman is a journalist
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