1934 Judaica Lithuanian Sports Club Makabi Kaunas Jewish GOLD/SILVER pin badge

Description

Shipping from Europe with tracking number
The
Lithuanian Sports Club Makabi
is a sports club of the
Jewish minority in Lithuania
. It is one of the many
Maccabi sports clubs worldwide
. It was originally established on September 19, 1920 in
Kaunas
. It ceased to exist during
the Holocaust in Lithuania
and was reestablished only in 1989 during the
perestroika
in the
Lithuanian SSR
. The club participates in the
Maccabiah Games
. It had about 500 members in 1990 and 200 in 2000.
[1]
As of 2014, the club supported nine sports (football, chess, basketball, table tennis, tennis, swimming, badminton, wrestling, shooting, and rhythmic gymnastics).
[2]
Interwar period
In 1926, the club had 83 sections that united some 4,000 members.
[3]
The best results were achieved by the footballers (
Kaunas Makabi
played 12 seasons in the
A Lyga
and won 3rd place in 1926), bicyclists (
Isakas Anolikas
represented Lithuania in the
1924
and
1928 Summer Olympics
, was Lithuanian champion), boxers (several members became Lithuanian champions), chess players (
Aleksandras Machtas
and
Isakas Vistaneckis
represented Lithuania at
Chess Olympiads
), and table tennis players (brought the sport to Lithuania; Olga Gurvičaitė became champion at the 1933 World Maccabiah Championship in
Prague
).
[3]
In total, the club supported 21 different teams.
[4]
It participated in the
1932
and
1935 Maccabiah Games
========================================================================================
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
Istanbul
,
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
Plovdiv
,
Bulgaria
, and 1898 saw the founding of
Bar Kochba Berlin
along with
Vivó és Athletikai Club
in
Budapest
,
Hungary
.
Other clubs that followed were named after “
Bar Kochba
” or Hebrew names such as “Hakoah” or “Hagibor” that symbolized strength and heroism. One of the basic premises behind the founding of these clubs was Jewish Nationalism, and specifically "
Muscular Judaism
". The concept was that Jews were not only a religious entity, but also one based on a common historical and social background, having special cultural and psychological concepts that have been preserved to this day, resulting in a strong recognition of collective belonging.
Maccabi boxing club, Tunisia, 1923
At
Krakow
,
Poland
there was during the interwar period a deep animosity between the locally-based
Makkabi Kraków
club and the rival
Jewish
club
Jutrzenka Krakow
, associated with the
Bund
political party. While both clubs shared in the above aspiration to demonstrate a Jewish physical strength, they had divergent political programs - the one sharing in the Zionist aspiration of creating a Jewish state in Palestine, while the other was oriented to the Bundist program of Jewish cultural autonomy in Europe. This political opposition exacerbated their athletic rivalry between fans and players, to the point that matches between the two teams were generally referred to as a "Holy War".
In 1906, the first Jewish gymnastics club was formed in
Palestine
. Clubs later would spring up in other cities. By 1912, all of them joined the Maccabi Federation of Israel. That same year, the first relations were established between them and their European counterparts, when a decision was taken at the Maccabi Conference in Berlin to begin group trips to
Palestine
.
Maccabi GB is a member of the English
National Council for Voluntary Youth Services (NCVYS)
[3]
because of its work promoting the personal and social development of young people.
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".
[2]
In 1960, the
International Olympic Committee
officially recognized the Maccabi World Union as an "Organization of Olympic Standing".
[4]