Maccabi World Union
Original Maccabi logo
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| Formation | 1921 |
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| Type | INGO |
| Purpose | Sports |
| Headquarters | Kfar Maccabiah |
| Location | |
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Region served
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Worldwide |
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President
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Jeanne Futeran |
| Website | maccabi.org |
The Maccabi World Union (in some past occasions spelled Makkabi) is an international Jewish sports organisation spanning 5 continents and more than 50 countries, with some 400,000 members. Maccabi World Union organises the Maccabiah Games, a prominent international Jewish athletics event.
The organisation comprises six confederations: Maccabi Israel, European Maccabi confederation, confederation Maccabi North America, confederation Maccabi Latin America, Maccabi South Africa and Maccabi Australia.
The movement is named after the Maccabees (Hebrew: מכבים or מקבים, Makabim) who were a Jewish national liberation movement that fought for and won independence from Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Ironically, at the time the Maccabees were staunchly opposed to athletic competitions, part of the Hellenizing cultural tendencies which they opposed. Athletic competitions held in Jerusalem under the Seleucid rule were terminated once the Maccabees took over the city. However, the modern Zionists who took up the name were mainly interested in the Maccabees as militant Jewish heroes whose example Zionism sought to emulate.
The Maccabi World Union was created at the 12th World Jewish Congress in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia in 1921. It was then decided by the secretariat of Jewish sport leaders to form one umbrella organization for all Jewish sports associations. Its aims were defined as working "foster physical education, belief in Jewish heritage and the Jewish nation, and to work actively for the rebuilding of our own country and for the preservation of our people". In 1960, the International Olympic Committee officially recognized the Maccabi World Union as an "Organization of Olympic Standing".
As early as the 19th century, Jewish sports clubs were founded in Eastern and Central Europe. The first club was the Israelite Gymnastic Association Constantinople (German: Israelitischer Turnverein Konstantinopel) founded in 1895 in Constantinople, Turkey by Jews of German and Austrian extraction who had been rejected from participating in other social sport clubs. Two years later, haGibor was formed in Philipopolis (now Plovdiv), Bulgaria, and 1898 saw the founding of Bar Kochba Berlin along with Vivó és Athletikai Club in Budapest, Hungary.
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