- i24news
- International
- Europe
- Bye, Bye Maccabiah
Bye, Bye Maccabiah
All-Jewish athletic competition was held in Nazi Olympic stadium; Germans won most medals
In an ironic twist, Germany was the biggest winner of the 2015 European Maccabi Games - the first time that the Jewish Olympics were held in Germany.
The Maccabiah, held once in four years, drew much attention due to its historic location – the Olympiastadion in Berlin, ordered by Adolf Hitler for the 1936 Olympic Games.
Although Germany won 144 medals, including 54 in gold, and topped the medal table, Israel was ranked in the respected sixth place, with 21 medals, including seven golden ones.
Some 2,300 Jewish athletes in 38 delegations took part in the games: Germany (365), Great Britain (253), USA (206), and Israel (118) were the four largest delegations. The smallest delegations, from Georgia and Ireland, consisted of one person, each.
The Games aimed to "spread a sense of equality and fairness and showcase the new-found Jewish confidence to the German and European public," according to event organizers, but hosting the Maccabiah also raised the question whether it was at all proper to set religion as a qualification criterion for a sports event.
“Why is there a need for a Jewish Olympics nowadays?” wrote one critic in response to media coverage of the games. “Just imagine if someone would want to have a strictly Christian competition?”
But the controversy also contributed to public interest. While the organizers expected 8,000 people to attend the opening ceremony at the Olympic Park, almost 10,000 guests filled the open air theater last Tuesday, with 40,000 viewers from all over the world following the live broadcast online.
The matches were open to the public, and as they progressed so did the number of visitors on the bleachers. A popular highlight was “Let's play together” - a series of friendly games between the Maccabiah's athletes and local celebrities. In basketball, ALBA Berlin played against Maccabi Tel Aviv and a Maccabi soccer team challenged the German league's All Stars.
But one of the greatest achievements of the Maccabiah was unrelated to sports: Friday's feast at the Estrel Hotel set a Guinness world record as the largest Shabbat dinner, with 2,322 participants.
“You have to imagine this,” the president of the Maccabi association in Germany, Alon Meyer, said. “The largest Kabbalat Shabbat dinner ('Reception of the Shabbat') the world has ever seen has taken place here in Berlin. We are very happy,” he added.
Melissa Perlman, a US marathon runner, was emotional while telling i24news about her experience: “Having heard about the Maccabi Games as a little girl from my dad, a 1973 gold medalist, and then competing myself in both the 1997 and 2013 World Maccabi Games, I thought I knew what to expect. But it was very different. It brought together the history we have read about, the culture we live in and the indescribable pride we feel.”
At the closing ceremony on Tuesday, Berlin mayor Michael Muller stressed that, “The memory of the crimes committed against European Jews is, for many Berliners, a personal concern.”
“The fact that there is now a new generation in Germany which cannot be blamed for the crimes of their grandparents, fills us with gratitude and humility,” he added.
Oren Osterer, the director of the organizing committee told NBC News: "I would say that the younger generation was able to convince the older generation that it is right, and the time is right to hold the European Maccabi Games in Berlin, without forgetting the past."
Polina Garaev is i24news' correspondent in Germany.