The Sporting Club Maccabi de Paris in the Interwar Period (1924–1939): The Path of a Zionist Club

Abstract

The Sporting Club (SC) Maccabi de Paris is both the first longstanding Jewish sports club in France and the most influential. Founded in 1924 by Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia, the club disseminated ‘philanthropic’ Zionism during the interwar period, uniting Jews from different communities around the idea of creating a Jewish State in Palestine. At the time, sport was considered a tool for regenerating bodies to create a ‘new Jewish man’. The club’s leaders fostered the idea of a strong and powerful Jewish people united in Judaism, and the participation of French athletes in the ‘Jewish Olympics’, the Maccabiah Games, represented the culmination of this propaganda. Rooted in cultural history, this article studies the birth and development of the SC Maccabi de Paris from its creation to the beginning of the Second World War.