Maccabiah: The Long Ride to the International Sports Games

"This enlightening title is recommended for all." —Association of Jewish Libraries

In time for the 2025 Maccabiah Games, this picture book biography tells the origin story of the third-largest international sporting event and the unique problem-solving creator Yosef Yekutieli employed to make his dream possible.

In 1912, 15-year-old Yosef Yekutieli listened to radio broadcasts from the Stockholm Olympics and hatched an idea: an Olympic-style competition for Jewish athletes from around the globe in the brand-new city of Tel Aviv.

People initially didn't take him seriously, but that wouldn't stop Yosef. For the next two decades, he worked to make this idea a reality. There was no stadium, pool, or running track anywhere in British Mandate Palestine. But Yosef wasn’t deterred.

There was one big problem left: there was no easy way to tell athletes about the games!

The solution: Motorcycles. Riding thousands of miles, over mountains and through deserts, motorcycle brigades announced the games to the world Jewish community. In 1932, the Maccabiah Games were born.

"In 1912 Tel Aviv, 15-year-old Yosef Yekutieli plays soccer with his friends in an empty lot, reads about Jewish athletes from other countries winning Olympic medals in Stockholm, and dreams of an athletic competition for Jews from all over the world. He and his friends laugh at the idea, but he continues thinking about it, gradually solving the problems of holding such a competition in Tel Aviv: paving a running track; building a stadium; making arrangements for swimmers to use Haifa harbor. By 1931, one question remains: how to find and invite Jewish athletes from far-flung communities. The answer? A motorcycle brigade travelling through North Africa and Europe, from Egypt to England, personally inviting athletes and spreading the word through local journalists to build publicity. At the first Maccabiah Games in 1932, 390 athletes represented eighteen different countries.

Maccabiah is told in the first person; Yekutieli narrates the story of his life and how he faced the challenges of establishing such a large international competition. An afterword provides historical details about his life and the 'Maccabiah Games, Then and Now,' including photographs from early and more recent competitions. In a note addressed to the reader, Olitzky and Cohen emphasize Yekutieli’s persistence and ask how the reader shows grit like Yosef, highlighting the links between the Hebrew words hatmada (persistence) and tamid (eternal) and the Eternal Flames of the Maccabiah and Olympic Games and the Eternal Light readers may have seen over the ark at a synagogue.

With explanatory material, vibrant illustrations, and a text that easily leads itself to be read aloud, this book is an ideal introduction to the Games, which will be unfamiliar to many, and the inspiring true story behind them for preschool and early elementary students. The adults in their lives might just learn something new, too. This enlightening title is recommended for all library collections."

—Association of Jewish Libraries