Yuval Rubovitch

Jewish Sports in Times of Persecution

The Story of Bar Kochba Leipzig

Translation: Peggy Plötz-Steger
Language: English
162 pages, softcover with (fold-in) flaps
59 illustrations
ISBN: 978-3-95565-573-0
Publication date: 2022
17.90 €

Jewish sports – both in the general German associations until 1933, and in Jewish associations with various political leanings – played a vital role in the public life of Leipzig’s Jews. The history of these sports associations – primarily of the Zionist Bar Kochba Leipzig, as the biggest and most important of these – is also an integral element in the history of the Jewish community and of Leipzig in general. Bar Kochba Leipzig raised the self-confidence of Leipzig’s Jews at a time when they were disparaged, degraded and disenfranchised. At its sports ground in Leipzig-Eutritzsch, Bar Kochba, together with other Jewish organisations, prepared Jewish young people for emigration and self-rescue. Those members of the association who managed to escape continued to contribute to public life later in the State of Israel, and in the diaspora. This book also tells their stories.

In collaboration with Gerlinde Rohr
With contributions by Tüpfelhausen – Das Familienportal e.V.
With a greeting by Thomas Feist
Translated from the German by Peggy Plötz-Steger


Yuval Rubovitch

geboren 1985, Studium der Geschichte und Politikwissenschaft an der Hebrew University in Jerusalem; Masterarbeit über die deutsche Sozialdemokratie und den Zionismus vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg; Promotion über Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky und die Frage der jüdischen Nationalität. Lehrbeauftragter der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg und der Augustana-Hochschule Neuendettelsau; Träger des Jakob-Talmon-Preises der Israelischen Akademie der Wissenschaften für Masterstudenten.