Yosef Yekutieli, one of the founders of the Maccabi sports organization and initiator of the Maccabiah games, died Saturday at the age of 85 and was buried Sunday. He won the Israel Prize for his work in physical education in 1979, and was a distinguished citizen of Tel Aviv.
Yekutieli was born in Russia in 1897 and came to Palestine at the age of nine. After graduating from the Jerusalem Teachers Seminary, he fought with the Turkish army during World War I. He was one of the founders of the Palestine Football Association in 1928 and the Palestine Sports Federation in 1931.
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