There’s a well-worn joke that the shortest book ever published is ‘Great Jewish Sporting Heroes’. We Jews are known for various attributes – a penchant for Nobel prizes, for example – but sporting prowess isn’t really one of them.
And if that’s true generally, the book of British Jewish sports stars is even thinner. There’s racing driver Stirling Moss and Harold Abrahams, of Chariots of Fire fame. Or football manager David Pleat. Then it starts to get a bit more difficult. But all those jokes need to be torn up now that Wayne Rooney has revealed that he’s Jewish. Properly Jewish, not just ‘I love bagels’ Jewish.
This is probably the first time that the names Wayne Rooney and Tom Stoppard have ever appeared in the same sentence, but they have something important in common
In an episode of his new reality show, The Real Rooneys, the former England and Manchester United strike relates how he recently discovered that his maternal grandmother and her family were Polish Jews: ‘I’ve recently found out that my mum’s mum, so my nan’s, family were Polish Jews.’
When a producer points out that this means Rooney is halachically (according to Jewish religious law) Jewish, Rooney replies: ‘I’m Catholic. But then I’ve always asked questions like, why aren’t we Jewish?’. He then jokes there could be a spin-off show, ‘Roo the Jew?’.
The revelation comes during a visit to Auschwitz with his family, Rooney’s second time at the concentration camp. As it happens, I was with Rooney for his first visit, in 2012 when the England team were in Poland for the Euros. As editor of the Jewish Chronicle I was asked to accompany the players. I am not suggesting I had the least idea that Rooney was actually Jewish, but I wrote at the time how struck I was by his reaction and behaviour. He was clearly affected and genuinely moved – he was tearful – and asked a series of informed and curious questions of the guides.
This is probably the first time that the names Wayne Rooney and Tom Stoppard have ever appeared in the same sentence, but they have something important in common. Like Rooney, Stoppard also discovered that he was Jewish – learning at 56 that four of his grandparents and several other relatives had been murdered in the Holocaust. He had been brought up in England as an Anglican. Likewise Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State, who discovered at 59 that her parents were Jewish converts to Catholicism before the Holocaust. She also learned that numerous relatives had been murdered in the Holocaust.
Rooney is not the only England footballer of his generation to have Jewish roots and, truth be told, his teammates’ are much stronger. David Beckham’s grandfather on his mother’s side, Joseph, was Jewish and Beckham has spoken warmly of how his grandfather ensured that the family kept some Jewish traditions: ‘We went to bar mitzvahs and weddings and I would wear a kippah. Every Saturday morning, I used to go to see my grandfather – you’d walk in the house to my grandmother preparing chicken soup and matza balls and latkes. We always kept to those traditions; it was always about the family coming together and spending time together.’ He has also said, ‘I am part of the Jewish community and I am proud to say it.’
Indeed, Beckham knows Hebrew prayers. In an interview at St John’s Wood synagogue in 2023, he was asked about his claims to uphold some Jewish traditions. The interviewer started off the brachah (prayer) prayer for bread – which every Jew would know – and Beckham finished it in Hebrew.
But even if Beckham got there first, it’s good to welcome Rooney to the fold. As for Colleen: given her skilled detective and espionage work in outing Rebecca Vardy, surely she would be a shoo-in for the Mossad?
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