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Sport fandom is always a commitment for generations. We support a sports team not only because its home grounds happens to be where we were born, of if it was particularly successful whilst we were growing up. We support a sports team, above all else, because it is the same team that our dad supports and has been supporting since his own father was – and so, fandom’s multigenerational interlinkage ends up passed down from father to son and in recent years, much to our enjoyment, also mother and daughter. Our sports team fandom is our own individual, familial, and national history – and for good reason. For instance, one of Hapoel Tel Aviv FC’s most famous fan songs [full disclosure, Reds fan here – DL], opens with the lyrics, “from the day I was born / my daddy always told me that I love you, Hapoel / and hate Maccabee and Beitar” (a purely sports-based sentiment which of course, in recent years has made way for envy, now en route to embarrassment.)
If in the past, we could only ever learn about our team’s history through stories or at best, if we chanced upon an old and faded photograph then now, ever since this website came about, we can properly see and feel everything from up close, as if we were sitting in person at the old Ramat Gan Football Stadium right next to Golda Meir and a crowd of 70,000 back in 1956, watching the historic match between the Israeli national team and the USSR at the height of the Iron Curtain period. Alternatively, we can now also discover long-forgotten sporting events which even the most avid sports fans such as yours truly would never have known had ever taken place, like the time Israel played UK Premier League side, Arsenal FC, or when it went up against the Japanese national team at Rosh Haayin’s local football grounds.
But make no mistake. This brilliantly wonderful archive is home to so much more than just the popular or professional sports such as football or basketball. Here you can also find more than your share of other, more niche fields – for the Zionist movement not only tried but succeeded in reviving the ‘Muscle Jew’ (in an outright effort to distance itself as much as possible from the image of the ‘weakling’, wimpy diaspora Jew). The archive houses quite a few period films that chronicle athletes swimming the length and breadth of the Sea of Galilee back when it was more of a sea than a puddle, alongside footage of special sport-themed days at kibbutzim and in schools back when the motto was a little more, “healthy mind in a healthy body” and not so much, “Fortnite, Doritos and chill,” at home in front of the screen.
The majority of films at the archive have been preserved in surprisingly good quality. Through them, you can not only learn a lot about sport in the country but also, as a whole, find out so much about history and life in Israel of yesteryear. Even when they’re all in black and white, you’re guaranteed to feel every spec of colour in them.
Israeli sport, lamentably, hasn’t really got all that much to show for. We’ve only ever qualified once for the World Cup in 1970, back when the currency was still the pound and ‘Shiye’ Feigenbaum was a Forward who actually knew his way around the best penalty area angles, as opposed to camera angles on Reality TV celebrity football programme, Goalstar where most of his coaching energy seems to go towards the relationship between Big Brother alum, Leon Schneiderovsky and his boyfriend. Our first Olympic medal only came in 1992 and we only seem to ever excel in fighting (Judo), sea (surfing), or fighting at sea as indicated by one too many WhatsApp videos from recent years (which no doubt will too end up in the Jerusalem Cinematheque’s Film Archive sometime in the distant future.)
So, we may not have been and most likely, never will be a sports superpower and indeed, the cliché about how Jews are infinitely better at managing sport than practising it has not once proven itself rather accurate but nevertheless; this footage available to you here is nothing short of extraordinary as it offers a moving glimpse of Israeli history as a whole and the country’s sports history, in particular. And who knows, you may even be able to make out your dad or granddad in the old Bloomfield Stadium aisles, back when it was more commonly referred to as ‘Gloomfield’ but make no mistake, there was joy there and in spades. So go on; go do some stretches and let’s get streaming.