6. Rule Britannia! The British Influence and the Maccabiah Games
The First World War saw sporting activity grind to a virtual halt. There
were a few sporadic attempts at local activities, but with the Turks terrorizing
much of the population and sending others into involuntary exile, there was
little possibility of sustaining meaningful activity.
When the British replaced the Turks, however, the picture changed radically.
In the first years of the Mandate, the relations between the British administration
and the local Jewish population were generally positive and the Yishuv gained
greatly in many ways from the British presence. Among other things, the world
of sport received a great boost.
The British brought with them both a sporting tradition and a strong enthusiasm
for sport. It is hardly surprising that healthy competition developed between
the resident populations and the British with so many troops and other British
functionaries stationed in Palestine. Soccer, the most popular of British
games, now began to flourish. There is very little record of the playing of
soccer before the War, although presumably there must have been some, but
now that game started to take off. Athletics too, went through a major period
of development at this time.
Maccabi had been developing for several years as an organization in Eretz
Yisrael. The Rishon LeTzion club had transformed itself as early as 1909 into
the central element of Maccabi Tel Aviv with the addition of a few other groups,
and other Maccabi clubs had developed in the next few years around the country.
In 1912, in a meeting in the central hall of the Herzaliah Gymnasium, now
located in the recently founded Tel Aviv, the Israeli federation of Maccabi
was formed, and over the next period more clubs joined so that Maccabi was
the central sporting element in the country.
Meanwhile in the international Maccabi organization, initiatives were stirring
for the organization of a kind of Jewish Olympic games, the Maccabiah. The
idea had been thrown around generally over the years but the first concrete
initiative was made within the governing body of Maccabi in the late 1920’s
by Yosef Yekutieli, one of the heads of Israeli Maccabi and a founder of the
Israeli football Association. Yekutieli had definite aims for the games.
He saw them as:
The development of Jewish culture – both
physical and spiritual, and the presentation of that culture to the Jewish
people and to the whole world: the development of Jewish sport in the world
and the emphasis of the idea that Jewish sporting athletes were not just part
of their home countries but were part of the Jewish people as a whole. The
emphasizing of the fact that Eretz Yisrael is the centre of the Jewish world;
and finally, the strengthening of the Maccabi movement.
His proposal was finally accepted in 1929. Preparations began for the first
Maccabiah, scheduled for 1932, in order to mark the passing of exactly 1800
years since the beginning of the Bar Kochba rebellion.
Preparations were delayed by the outbreak of the 1929 Arab riots in Palestine
but work was resumed and the games were held on time. A new Maccabi stadium
next to the Yarkon River in Tel Aviv was finished just days before the opening
of the games. It contained 20,000 places in all including 5,000 seats and
was filled for the opening ceremony that included 2,500 participants in a
gymnastics display. Altogether, in the games themselves some 390 athletes
took part representing fourteen different countries including Jewish athletes
from Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. The evening before the games a huge gala ball
was held which included dramatic presentations from the country’s top
theatre companies, and the games themselves provided perhaps few substantive
sporting achievements, but proved a great success and created the desire for
more.
Three years later, the second Maccabiah took place. This was on a larger
scale. Some 1350 athletes from twenty-eight different countries arrived for
the games together with a thousand accompanists of one kind or other. Many
stayed in Palestine after the games. This is hardly surprising. The noose
was tightening around the necks of the Jews of Europe and the British had
severely limited the numbers of potential Olim – Jewish immigrants.
Many used the games to overcome the limitations of the British system and
to make their way to perceived safety. The most pronounced case was the Bulgarian
delegation of whom all 350 stayed in the country, and the Lithuanians were
not far behind them.
By this time, there was a great variety of sporting events. A swimming pool
had just been opened in Bat Galim near Haifa (which had been up till now the
centre of water sports in Palestine) and in addition to the pool events, judo
and ju-jitsu, weightlifting and bicycle racing were all now on the Maccabiah
menu in addition to the more central athletic events which had provided the
basis for the first Maccabiah games. The next games were scheduled for 1938,
but for a whole variety of reasons, they were never held. The riots in Eretz
Yisrael (the “intifada” of 1936-39), financial difficulties, the
situation of European Jewry and the opposition of the Mandate authorities
who were concerned at the possibility of thousands more illegal immigrants,
all worked together to postpone the event.
In the end, the next Maccabiah would not be held until 1950, and by that
time many things had changed. The powerful delegations of Central, Eastern
and Southern Europe had all disappeared in the Holocaust, and Israeli sport
had grown increasingly strong, with improved facilities and more professional
training. Only 800 participants from nineteen different countries took part,
but in the new national stadium of Ramat Gan, some fifty thousand spectators
would stand and applaud the world’s first international Jewish competition
in a Jewish state.
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