Russia starts today at the Jewish Olympics — RealnoeVremya.com
The Russian-Jewish Congress is for breaking through the wall everywhere, building the IOC and developing federations. The competitions of the XXI Maccabiah started in Israel – races of sports competitions on the model of the Olympic Games, which are held in Israel every 4 years. Among the participants and athletes from Russia. Read more in the material of Realnoe Vremya.
“Thanks” coronavirus
The 21st Maccabiah was postponed last year due to the fact that it became for Russian athletes of Jewish nationality, which can start in the Promised Land. Now in Tel Aviv they plan to start national teams of about 60 countries, among which Russia is not included.
But our Jewish athletes who have made aliyah from Russia will compete in the Olim delegation, just like the Belarusians, by the way. The Russian Jewish Congress, which takes a special part in the away competitions of domestic athletes at the competitions in Israel, held in Moscow, accepting and accommodating about a hundred participants in the games throughout Russia, held their visa support. This is not so much, in 2013 about two hundred Russians were registered at the Maccabiah, after 4 years – 142 athletes, but for the older generation there was a situation of this breakthrough. The situation is reminiscent of the one that we were not previously familiar with in the regular Olympics, when a team of strengthening worked in Tokyo 2020, and earlier, in Rio 2016, a team called Independent Olympic Athletes started. Moreover, the “independents” captured two medals, including gold, in contrast to the “refugees”. The only exception, including among the “independent” athletes, who refused to participate in the national team of their homeland due to the discovery of disagreements.
The history of the Maccabiah dates back to 1932, when Jews still lived in the country, which was called the Mandatory Official, but its athletes then could only start at the Chess Olympiad. In the end, a native of Mogilev, Mensyshkin, became the initiator of the event, which is currently allowed by the “Jewish Olympics”. This greatly displeased Great Britain, which administered the Mandatory Office. There are memories that during the second Maccabiah in 1935, athletes opposed the British police, who banned the parade of participants through the streets of Tel Aviv. But this is a beginning, a consequence, saving the lives of high-class athletes from Lithuania and Bulgaria, who completely remained on the territory of Mandatory Freedom. After 8 years, in March 1943, almost all the Jews of Bulgaria were sent to the Treblinka concentration camp, located in Poland. By the way, fearing that the little Armenian Bedros Krikoryan would be confused with a Jew, his father changed that name to Kirkorov.
The third Maccabiah was to take place in 1938, but the British were against it, fearing further emigration of the court session to the mandated instance. In the end, it passed in 1950, literally 2 years after the formation of Israel. In 1969, Israel was headed by a native of Kyiv, Golda Meir, and in Maccabiah, for the first time, she was entrusted with lighting the solemn fire of the winner – an emigrant from England, Deborah Turner. By the way, in both cases, these were breakthroughs both in the political and in the sports arena.
“On the quarter former our people»
Russian athletes made their debut at the 15th Maccabiah in 1997. Then there were about three thousand athletes. Since that time, the Maccabiah has only added to the number of countries and the total number of participants. The Games are now ranked as the largest mass sporting event in the world. In 2013, about nine thousand athletes took part in the final, and more than 10 thousand athletes took part in the last Maccabiah, held in Jerusalem in 2017. Now Russia is most massively represented in all types of wrestling: freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling, judo, and fencing.
Because of poverty and pogroms, so many events left Tsarist Russia that it is impossible to count. Here, without straining: the grandfather of basketball coach Larry Brown from Minsk, fencer Daniel Bukants, parents from Vilnius, Albert Al Axelrod – his parents fled the pogroms. We found three Maccabiah participants from the US sports delegation. Which refers to the first mass move, which took place already in the mid-twenties of the last century. Among this wave of repatriates from the USSR were chess player Iosif Dobkin, as well as the parents of the future goalkeeper of the football team Yakov Khodorov and the future Olympic champion Alex Eliraz. The last participation in the first session for the Islamic Olympics in 1952, and after the end of hostilities. choice at the front as a sniper 38-year-old Eliraz got into the Israeli shooting team, but was left without medals.
This is followed by a fairly massive post-war departure to Israel. The chess player Mendel Khvoinik left on his own. Born in Poland, for which he had to bear the name Mechislav, he moved before the war to the city of Rovno, which became Soviet under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In the end, Mendel-Mechislav survived the victory, deserved by a Soviet citizen, after which in 1949 he broke into Israel, where already under the name Menachem Oren they worked three times at the Chess Olympiad, the last time in 1956, in Moscow.
How useful Maccabiah for Israel?
Of course, this is PR, and it has been since the time when he did not know about such a phenomenon, they did not come up with a term for it. The competition was won by the best athletes, including Olympic champions, and in 1967 the American swimmer Mark Spitz, whose mother was also from Russia, made his debut. After 5 years, he became the seven-time Olympic champion in Munich.
But for Israel, this tournament became legendary, it was the debut of Tal Brody, who at that moment played for the local Maccabi from Tel Aviv. The American basketball player, after that Maccabiah, went to serve in the American army, where he spent 3 years. In 1969, he resolutely escaped to Israel to play at the Maccabiah already for the local team, along with compatriots Ronald Green and Mark Turenstein. Steve Kaplan and Eric Menkin were selected for the USA team that year. In 1970, Brody became a citizen of this country and joined the army for the second time, already in Israel. Unexpectedly, the local team received a powerful appearance from America, and Green with Turpenstein and Kaplan with Menkin plus Ronald Schwartz, Oakley Perry, in the future Jim Boatwright and Barry Leibovitz. By the way, it should be clarified that in order to speak for Israel and accept local citizens, the same Butwright and Perry changed their religion from Christianity to Judaism.
Eventually, many of them became representatives of the government in the seventies. Initially, the local club “Maccabi” in 1977 beat CSKA Moscow in the semifinals of the European Champions Cup. After that, the captain of the Israelis, Tal Brody, came up with the words “We are on the map. And we stay on the map — not just in sports, but in everything,” words that are legendary in Israel. After that, Maccabi won the Cup, and after 2 years, the Israeli team with suitable ex-Americans Kaplan, Leibovitz, Menkin and Louis Silver became vice-champions of Europe.
Rosenbaum sang, Shenderovich read. All in business
The most curious thing is that athletes from Russia went to the first Maccabiah back in the days of the USSR, in 1989. Then in 1991, the route of the Soviet ships was sent to Marseille, France, already to the European Maccabiah.
After a trip to the EuroMaccabiada, the representative of the Maccabi European Confederation, Vadim Polyansky, held in Leningrad the first and last parallel championship of the country in judo in the midst of a court session. It is always curious: was Arkady Rotenberg among the participants of those starts? Mini-football in Riga, volleyball in Tiraspol, karate in Simferopol, Maccabi conference in Vilnius, this is an amazing feeling from 1991, when Latvia and Lithuania, the recognized capitals were mentioned here, officially refused to compete with the athletes of the rest of the union, which came out from the championship in all team sports. The basketball championship in Kyiv was dedicated to the memory of the victims of Babi Yar. The end of the year is marked by Hanukkah, where Viktor Shenderovich and Alexander Rosenbaum acted as guests, currently divided into different waves of trenches. Rosenbaum didn’t even withhold pleasure at the graduation ring, reminiscent of a youthful passion for boxing. There are photos.
In 1992, cooperation began by holding a mini-football tournament in Tallinn, but each of the former Soviet republics had already begun to live their own lives, declaring for the Maccabiahs (Belarus and Ukraine in 1993, Kyrgyzstan in 1997, at the same time, by the way, with Russia ). The Russian Jewish Congress actively established contacts, in particular, in 1996, the Kazan-Jerusalem marathon run took place.
Who from iconic figure Russia processed on the Maccabiah?
Tatarstan representatives, by the way, rarely found themselves in the national team, except that Boris Meerovich can be called a football player who played for Rubin, Chelny KAMAZ, and Gornyak from the Bashkir city of Uchaly.
He played for the Russian national team in 2009, when the chess tournament brought together one of the strongest squads in history. One Hungarian Judit Polgar is worth something, or the Ukrainian Anna Ushenina, who, in the absence of a women’s tournament, performed in the so-called “open”, becoming the second among men. But there is also a “grandmaster”, whose participants were natives of Belarus Boris Gelfand and Ilya Smirin, as well as Azerbaijan – Emil Sutovsky, natives of Ukraine Alexander Khuzman (all team of Israel), Alexander Belyavsky (team of Slovenia), Russian Yevgeny Najer, Ukrainian Pavel Eljanov . Chess and fencers are the most stellar starts of the Maccabiahs, suffice it to say that Ian Nepomniachtchi, the recent winner of the contenders for the chess crown, as well as fencers Maria Mazina, Sergey Sharikov (all Russia) and the current Minister of Sports of Ukraine Vadim Gutzeit won there.
A kind of obligatory preparation can be called the desire of the hosts to hold meetings with Olympic competitions and chess, as well as ice hockey (he debuted in 2013), without showing a difference between winter and summer sports. By the way, in the last Maccabiah-2017, the bronze success was celebrated by ex-leopard Dan Hoffman and ex-petrochemist Egor Valeev. As for the Russian national team, it was precisely in relation to hockey that it looked the most logical when Evgeny Arsky and Eduard Kleiman from Birobidzhan, the capital of the Jewish administrative region, got into the arrival.
In 2019, the 15th EuroMaccabiah took place, the venue was held in Budapest, and Prime Minister of Transport Viktor Orban spoke to the delegation of the organizing committee of the EuroMaccabiah, which once again speaks of the level of attention that can happen. The difference between the Europe of the Maccabiahs from the original source is that they take place in different countries.
The British, who had taken part in the Maccabiahs from the very beginning, soon began to greet them, including the first persons. The last two Jewish Olympics have welcomed Prime Minister David Cameron and Theresa May. Only now Boris Johnson did not have time.
Jaudat Abdullin
Reference
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors of Realnoe Vremya.
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