In my experience (from people I know of my generation from the Jewish community round there) a lot of that identity is gone. In pretty much all cases, you'd never guess that they were Jewish (they're no more religious than I am, and the accent is not distinct from mine other than being a bit posher cos its posh round there and posh people don't talk proper like what I do). Which is a shame in some ways, but society isn't a museum.

I'm sure that cultural identity is still around, but I guess the price of integration is a lot of distinctiveness between communities fades over time.

Having grown up in Alwoodley, I grew up around lots of Jewish people, and I think I agree that there is still the cultural identity, and the people of my age would still describe themselves as Jewish, though set foot in a Synagogue as often as the average person sets foot in a church.

The switch to Friday night rugby will have done for a lot of Leeds's Jewish fans, at least in terms of home attendance. Before that there was considerable active support in the community, especially in the 70s/80s when Elland Road was the haunt of the NF leafleteers. Anyone interested in the topic might want to look at Anthony Clavane's book The Promised Land, although I think he downplays Leeds RL's part in the story because it doesn't quite fit in with his own: www.amazon.co.uk/Promised-Land-R ... 0224082639

The switch to Friday night rugby will have done for a lot of Leeds's Jewish fans, at least in terms of home attendance. Before that there was considerable active support in the community, especially in the 70s/80s when Elland Road was the haunt of the NF leafleteers. Anyone interested in the topic might want to look at Anthony Clavane's book The Promised Land, although I think he downplays Leeds RL's part in the story because it doesn't quite fit in with his own: www.amazon.co.uk/Promised-Land-R ... 0224082639

At school the Cas fan kids would chant "Jews" at us Leeds fans.

Being a staunch atheist I had a good chuckle once when Cas played at Headingley. I was waiting for my old man to return from the club shop when a family of Cas fans walked past. The what I assume was the mother piped up with "told you it was full of Jews here, they've all got big noses". I retorted that I did indeed have a large nose but that the cause of it was merely a genetic outcome many years ago and not an attribute of my faith. I'm pretty sure I lost her at genetic and she was totally lost at attribute

You should have replied You can tell their cas fans, they've got 6 fingers

I haven't heard the old "Hitler was a cas fan" for quite a while so hopefully they've cleaned up their act. The worst I saw from them was some anorexic hag with teeth like a row of bombed houses having an absolutely disgusting anti-semitic rant at Ashley Klein. Lovely woman!

Oh come on..... Ricky Stuart isn't that ugly.

Because the gene pool is so shallow in Castleford and the entire population shares 99.9% of their DNA with each other the anti-semitic gene gets passed down from one six-toed generation to the next to the point that the current generation of inbred, mutant, web-fingered Castlefordians don't even know why they hate Leeds fans or what a 'Yid' is.

Leeds as a town expanding in the 19th century with various groups migrating into the area I.E Jews ,Irish,Italians,and people coming other parts of the country,like farm worker's.I'm sure some of the historians on here will know more than me.Castleford having most of their industrial history in mining,did a lot of their ancestor's come from the old railway navvies coming in off the "tramp"when the raiways were finished?

As for the anti-Jewish sentiment, look no further than Wakefield ... I invited the individual concerned to my Bar Mitzvah, but he sadly declined.

I was always told that the hatred of Jews stems from the tailoring trade, of which Leeds was a major exponent (Montague Burton, anyone ?) and thus, had a large Jewish community heavily involved in it. Given it was a successful industry, naturally some of the money made was ploughed in to certain city sporting institutions and Leeds (apart from the mid-90s) has historically never been a poor club as a result. Sadly it seems that, mine owners were less generous with their cash and thus, it all goes back to Leeds being a rich club and the source of the money that fueled it.

In 1996 or 97 we (Cas) played Paris St Germain in, IIRC, the last SL game of the winter season, hence it was spring & quite a nice day. Me and the tigress had done a bit of shopping in Leeds before going on to the game, bought some lovely tasty titbits at a deli. At half time we tucked into our little pastries while sat on terraces. We soon attracted a group of puzzled onlookers. Eventually, possibly the same hag mentioned above, came over & stuck her face inbetween us and shouted “A ya French?”. “Oui” I replied. Chuffed to bits with herself she returned to her group with chest out shouting “Teld ya”. I spent the second half shouting “Allez”, “Merde” and “Sacre Bleu”, the extent of my French, under the stare of a group who were amazed that French people were apparently not monkeys as they had been led to believe.

There was a similar incident at Salford one Friday night when Perpignan played there and a certain group of faux-Frenchmen travelled from Leeds to amaze and baffle the poor Salfordians for whom someone from Manchester would have been a novelty visitor.

After celebrating Dane Carlaw's match-winning try - the former Ocker Test prop was playing on the wing by this point - someone told me "I hope your plane crashes on the way home". Didn't have the heart to tell him.