New Books Network Ofer Idels, "Embodying the Revolution: The Hebrew Experience and the Globalization of Modern Sports in Interwar Palestine" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
Mar 4, 2026
Ofer Idels, historian and Jenny Belzberg Postdoctoral Fellow, explores Zionism's complicated relationship with sports in interwar Palestine. He contrasts gymnastics and modern competitive sports. He examines Hebrew sporting language, debates over the 1936 Olympics, the rise of pre-military and water sports, and the role of Maccabiah and everyday games like matkot.
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Why Gymnastics Beat Sports In Early Zionism
- Zionism favored gymnastics' nation-building focus over modern sports' competitive, autotelic appeal.
- Gymnastics emphasized shaping a disciplined national body (Maccabi origins) while sports felt dangerously self-referential and entertainment-driven.
Hebrew Coverage Intentionally Dulls Sporting Drama
- Hebrew journalists framed matches as tame competitions to avoid sports' emotional pull and perceived moral danger.
- Match reports in the Yishuv prioritized dry results over evocative scene-setting common in English and Yiddish coverage.
Why Zionists Distrusted Sport's Self-Contained Pleasure
- Leaders across political lines rejected sport's autotelic nature because Zionism demanded purposeful, nationally useful activities.
- The concern wasn't socialism versus capitalism but that sport's self-contained pleasure undermined national meaning.
