The Maccabiah Games

Shmirat ha-Guf Hero: The Maccabiah Games

The Macca biah Gam es

The Maccabiah games can’t be a hero, but they can be a place where heroes emerge. The Maccabiah Games are the Jewish Olympics. They are held in Israel every four years in the year following the Olympic Games. The best Jewish athletes from throughout the world compete. Israeli Arabs are allowed to compete, too. The Maccabiah is organized by the Maccabi World Union (MWU). It is a worldwide organization devoted not only to sports but to furthering Jewish identity and traditions. The MWU is headquartered in Israel.

Yos ef Yekutieli

The Maccabiah Games were the brainchild of fifteen-year-old Russian-born Yosef Yekutieli. Yekutieli, who was living in Israel before it was a state, was so excited by the 1912 Olympic Games that he dreamed of a worldwide Jewish Olympics. Even though he was laughed at, he spent the next ten years developing his plan. In 1928 Yekutieli presented his proposal to the Jewish National Fund. He had the idea that the Maccabiah Games be organized to remember the 1,800th anniversary of the Bar Kochba Rebellion (a Jewish revolt against the Romans). Yekutieli’s Maccabiada (as the games were originally called) was the right idea at the right time. The Eretz Yisrael Soccer Association and other Holy Land sports groups signed on and gave the proposed games their blessings. Sir Arthur “Andy” Wauchope, British High Commissioner of Palestine, admired the achievements of Zionists in Palestine, including the growing Jewish sports movement. The new High Commissioner gladly supported the Maccabiada on condition that it host Arab and official British Mandate athletes as well as Jewish sportsmen. The Maccabiada was scheduled for March 1932.

Mark eting th e Gam es

The next problem was reaching the world Jewish community. Two delegations of Jewish motor-bikers set off from Tel Aviv on a huge promotional tour to the Jewish communities of Europe, where most Jews lived. The first group of promoters hit the road in 1930, biking from Tel Aviv to Antwerp, Belgium. The second set of riders left Tel Aviv a year later for London. Yekutieli himself rode

A Succ ess

with one of the delegations.

The original Maccabiah was held March 28 to April 6, 1932. Four hundred athletes competed. Planned to occur every four years, Maccabiah II was moved up a year to 1935 because of the rising tide of Nazism in Europe. World War II forced postponement of the third Maccabiah. The Games today are organized by an International Maccabiah Committee and are sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee and World Federation of Sports. The Maccabiah Games rank among the five largest sports events in the world. Yosef Yekutieli’s dream became a shmirat ha-guf reality. To find out how to compete in the American Maccabiah Games or to become part of the American team, check out http://www.maccabiusa.com.

Shmirat ha-Guf Activity: Maccabees and Maccabiah

It is ironic that the Maccabees would be the inspiration two thousand years later for a Jewish sports movement. The Maccabean revolt was started by the creation of a gymnasium in Jerusalem by the High Priest Jason. This gym served as a focal point of Greek culture in the heart of the Jewish capital. It was there that Greek-wanna-be Jews, including some of the younger priests, took part in nude athletic contests and the pagan rituals that were part of the Greek sport experience. This angered the Jews who had resisted the ways of their idolworshipping neighbors for over a thousand years. Among the outraged was the priest Mattathias, who took Judah and his other sons away from Jerusalem to his native Modi’in, where they could live as Jews. When the Maccabees recaptured Jerusalem, one of the first things they did was destroy the gymnasium.

So why the connection between the Maccabees and Jewish sports? It was the heroic quality of the Maccabean struggle that spoke to those who use their name for modern Jewish athletics. The modern Jewish sports movement, and the Maccabi organization that emerged, served to instill a sense of national pride and purpose through sport, playing an important role in facing the dual threats of antiSemitism and assimilation.

Center for Sport and Jewish Life (http://www.csjl.org/articlereader.php?item=1)

1. What does “ironic” mean? 2. Why would the original Maccabees hate the

Maccabiah games? 3. Why did Jewish athletes choose the Maccabees as their role model? 4. What is good about the modern Maccabiah Games? 5. H ow is this “ironic”?