Kruz Hasoferim.

In the winter of 1931, the Israel-based sports organization Maccabi sought to schedule soccer matches to be played on the Sabbath and on Jewish Festival days. Understandably, this decision roused much anger within the religious population, however, as this important document testifies, the cream of Jewish Palestine’s secular cultural leaders were equally opposed to such desecration of Jewish tradition. Hence this impassioned protest that was endorsed by over thirty of the most significant intellectuals in the country. It was subsequently published in the literary journal HaHed in the month of Shevat 1931. Written in a fine literary Hebrew, it states: “We view with great concern a breach which has become a license for sports organizations to schedule matches on the Sabbath and Holidays. A public desecration of the Sabbath of such proportion is a rebellion against the holiness of the Sabbath and the legacy of the nation. It will destroy the custom of Sabbath-rest that past generations sacrificed their lives to uphold. These holy rest days have given our nation the “extra soul,” strength and vigor to remain proud and steadfast to Judaism… There is no Jewish people or Jewish nation without the Sabbath… Sabbath is the life-blood and eternal foundation of the nation of Israel… No [foreign] nation can dominate the soul of a generation that does not desecrate the Sabbath…In a time of great crisis we turn to the heads of the organizations, the players and the fans not to impede the peace of the community, the unity of the nation and the honor of the land.” Among the signatories are: Chaim Nachman Bialik, Hugo Bergman, S.Y. Agnon, Y. C. Ravnitzky, S. Assaf, S.L. Gordon, Y.N. Epstein, B. Dinburg (Dinur), Chanoch Yallon, Joseph Klausner and many more notables. Of curious interest, one of the signees states that he cannot put his name to anything which also contains the signature of Prof. Hugo Bergman - even for a project that is for the sake of God! <<A fascinating document displaying how all sides of society in Eretz Israel, religious as well as secular, sought to preserve the specifically Jewish identity of the emerging State.>>