JEFF JACOBS

Abuse from fans demands forceful response

I am a Roman Catholic. A 23andMe genetic test shows I am one-quarter Ashkenazi Jew.

More importantly for the purposes of this piece, I am a sports writer of four decades. As a columnist for nearly 25 of those years, experience has led me to allow stories of high school fan abuse to evolve before venturing any opinion.

As with the Fairfield Prep student section known as the “Bomb Squad” chanting anti-Semitic insults at Staples lacrosse players on May 30, a familiar narrative emerges.

There is a report of offensive behavior. This is followed by condemnation of the slurs, often in a growing media glare.

A counter-argument emerges on social media, in the comment section following online of reports and emails. Don’t you know half those things were never said? Don’t you know the aggrieved party ignited the hard feelings (in this case a private Facebook group posting)? C’mon, it’s just a bunch of kids trying to unnerve an opponent, don’t you know their intent wasn’t racist, homophobic, anti-Islamic or anti-Semitic?

Do your homework. You weren’t even at the game.

We then wait for school officials to take punitive measures, or in conjunction with the NAACP, AntiDefamation League, LGBT leaders, etc., embark on a

path of enlightenment.

And then it happens all over again in another town a few months later.

When Staples lacrosse coach Mike McNulty told Justin Papp of Hearst Connecticut Media that the visiting Bomb Squad chanted anti-Semitic insults at his players with Jewish-sounding names during a state playoff game, the visceral reaction was one of disgust. “Happy Hanukkah!” “We have Christmas!” Singing the Dreidel Song. “I have a little dreidel. I made it out of clay. And when it’s dry and ready …”

When it was dry and ready, the Bomb Squad had delivered a message of hate to a third of the Staples team and humiliated its Jesuit institution. Maybe these teenagers had intended to do neither. They had done both.

I am a product of a Catholic education. Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum — old altar boys do not forget their Latin. Nor do they forget that the Jesuits are seen as God’s soldiers. The optics of their prep boys chanting “We have Christmas!” at Jewish kids are horrible.

Prep principal Robert A. Perrotta sent a letter to parents saying there was no place for “boorish cheers that serve to demean the dignity of our opponents,” but McNulty was not satisfied. He said it was more than boorish, he said, it was anti-Semitic.

This is the point where I scream, “You are both right!”

In addressing abhorrent student behavior, we must insist on addressing equally and simultaneously the athletic venue where it occurs. We must put them on parallel tracks. If we don’t we are on a fool’s errand. Boorish fan behavior, bathed in testosterone, and spontaneous mob mentality is a global scourge in itself.

What the Bomb Squad chanted must be condemned. I have a Jewishsounding name. Over the years, I have received unsigned letters saying what a stupid, stinking Jew I am. I came to feel as if I were seeing the ugly underbelly of man’s hatred without having to feel its pain. I wasn’t Jewish. Until a genetic test a few years ago showed I was a quarter. Turned out to be on my mom’s side, nothing to do with Jacobs. It got me thinking how with the Nazis in occupied Poland, my grandparents’ homeland, I would have been a Mischling, “mixed-breed,” subject to discrimination or worse. I look at those unsigned letters a little differently now.

There is an undeniable coarsening of America and it should scare us all. The ADL has statistics demonstrating that anti-Semitic incidents are on a marked rise in America. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, unedited dialogue have unleashed the worst angels of our nature. This, unsurprisingly, has spread through our children.

In the past few years alone, Canton students chanted “Trump!” as Hartford Classical Magnet players shot free throws. Farmington students chanted “SAT scores!” at Hartford Capital Prep girls basketball players. Wilton students chanted “Build the wall!” at Danbury football players. There are more.

The work that Fairfield Prep — which has not divulged the punishment for its offending students — has done in recent days with Jewish leaders is to be applauded. After their meeting, Rabbi Jeremy Wiederhorn of Westport told Hearst Media that Fairfield Prep president Rev. Thomas M. Simisky said Prep’s curriculum would be adjusted to better educate students about anti-Semitism, and that Perrotta promised religious diversity would be the theme for next school year. All a good first step forward.

Yet what about your town’s playing fields? What about next September? Ask yourself this: How many more rowdy and immature settings can you think of than a bunch of high school boys packed into the stands at a sporting event? Music is blaring. Hormones are popping. The mob mentality is in full effect.

High school fan sections love to think they’re hilarious. They love nothing more to get under the skin of opposing players. For every racial or religious slur, there must be a hundred “No. 14, you’re ugly! … No. 40, I was with your girl last night.” High school kids will say just about anything once in the moment, but all of it can hurt for much longer.

In a brilliant commencement speech centering on the Staples incident, Simisky said it better: “Whether those actions were intended to be hateful, ignorant or otherwise, the results are the same: hurtful, divisive and insidiously harmful to all that is good in the world.”

It doesn’t have to be overt bigotry to be received as such. No amount of rationalization by parents that their kid didn’t really mean it can quickly heal a wound.

There is no shortage or initiatives for good sportsmanship at high school events, but they need to be constantly reinforced and improved with more advanced group psychology.

From there, if games need to be stopped or even forfeited by monitors of fan abuse, so be it. If fan groups need to be disbanded for constant abuse, so be it.

The clay that makes the dreidel is also the clay in the hands of educators and parents. Before hearts harden, we must mold our kids for good. Before their minds harden, we must also teach them that a strong individual does not to bend to the ugly whims of the mob.