September 27, 1950
The Third Maccabiah Games, considered the Jewish Olympics, open in the 50,000-seat stadium in Ramat Gan. The games were originally scheduled to be held in 1938, but the British government cancelled them, mostly over concerns that the games would provide cover for large-scale illegal Jewish immigration amid the rising threat of German Nazis in Europe.
The games were the first to be held in the independent State of Israel. Twenty countries sent a total of 800 athletes. At the opening ceremony, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion told the competitors, “Existence in our ancestral home requires physical might no less than intellectual excellence.”
