Maccabi GB

Maccabi GB is today one of the country's largest and most innovative Jewish Charities. We aim to deliver a broad range of Sporting, Educational and Social events for the whole of the Jewish community with the ethos of Jewish continuity and the centrality of Israel as our primary motivation and we currently run over 80 programmes a year.

We have been running our programme in this country for over 65 years and as a charity this has been achieved only as a result of the support of a large group of dedicated volunteers and financial support from both the community and government funding.

We act as an umbrella organisation for over 30 different sports and support thousands of Jewish adults and young people, including those with special needs, who take advantage of our extensive programmes every year. This happens either directly through Maccabi GB events or via our network of National Clubs.

Our latest initiative, The Maccabi Challenge, allows young people with special needs the opportunity to take an active part in Maccabi events, some of which are specially planned, for them including the recent Israel tour.

As well as our comprehensive sports programmes we offer an extensive range of informal education projects and social events for all age groups, we do Israel tours, summer and winter camps and our Leadership development course has been running for over 20 years and works with clubs and individuals, training and educating the leaders of tommorrow.

OUR HISTORY

Maccabi was founded at the turn of the century in Central and Eastern Europe. Following rising anti-semitism, Jews were excluded from local sports and social clubs. So they decided to form their own.

The clubs concentrated on developing their members' physical fitness, primarily for reasons of self-defence.

Maccabi now has over 400,000 members in 55 countries throughout the world. In the UK alone there are 12,000 members.

Early Maccabi clubs were based around sports but soon became social, cultural and sporting centres for the community. This continues today with many sports including badminton, basketball, bridge, cricket, football, golf, gymnastics, hockey, karate, lawn bowls, netball, rugby, softball, squash, swimming, table-tennis, tennis, tenpin bowling, track & field, triathlon, volleyball and water polo. There are also 25 youth clubs spread throughout the country, with many hundreds of young members regularly attending for social, educational and sporting events.