Maccabiah: The Long Ride to the International Sports Games

A teenage Yosef Yekutieli dreamed up the idea to hold an Olympic-style competition for Jewish athletes. Twenty years later, motorcycle brigades traveled the world to spread the word. The true story of the first Maccabiah Games.

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.

• | Author: Deborah Bodin Cohen, Andre Ceolin, Kerry Olitzky
• | Publisher: Behrman House Inc.,U.S.
• | Publication Date: Jul 01, 2025
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Hardback
• | ISBN-13: 9781681156958
• | ISBN-10: 1681156954