Former Maccabi
USA President Bob
Spivak Dies at 85
GALL SIGLER | SPECIAL TO THE JE
R obert “Bob” Spivak, the for-
mer president of Maccabi USA
and an International Jewish
Sports Hall of Fame inductee, died on
May 25. He was 85.

Spivak was born in Philadelphia
in 1936 and attended Central High
School. After graduating from
Muhlenberg College, he embarked on
a lifelong career at the investment firm
CMS Cos. He retired to Yorktown,
Virginia. In 1977, Spivak visited Israel
with two friends and attended the
Maccabiah Games.

“He was very moved by that expe-
rience,” his son, Michael Spivak, said.

Upon returning to the United States,
Spivak became determined to revamp
the United States Committee Sports
for Israel, which was responsible for
sending Jewish American athletes to the
games. The organization “did not have a
lot of funding and was not well-known
at the time,” Michael Spivak said.

Together with a few friends, Spivak
assembled an organizing committee.

They moved the organization from
New York to Philadelphia. In 1981, he
became the organization’s president, a
position he held for two decades. That,
he believed, was his greatest success.

In the interview Maccabi USA con-
ducted with Spivak, he called the orga-
nization “a second family.”
Spivak was committed to providing
an opportunity for Jewish athletes to
compete in the Maccabiah Games. As
president of Maccabi USA, the suc-
cessor of the United States Committee
Sports for Israel, Spivak oversaw a
substantial increase in the number of
American athletes participating in the
Maccabiah Games — from 350 in 1981
to 600 in 2001, per the International
Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

“Bringing Jewish athletes to Israel
was his love and his passion,” Michael
Spivak said.

Bob Spivak 
Courtesy of the Spivak family
Together with the Maccabi World
Union and the JCC Association of North
America, Spivak helped develop the
Maccabi Sports Camps. The camps, held
locally throughout the United States,
increased awareness among Jewish
communities about the Maccabiah
Games and Maccabi USA at large.

Spivak viewed the Maccabiah Games
as more than a sports event.

“Marching into Ramat Gan stadium
and tens of thousands of Jews cheer-
ing” encapsulated the importance of
the Maccabiah Games to him, Michael
Spivak said. While he grew up in a
non-practicing environment, Judaism
was central to Spivak’s life.

“He believed that Judaism was a broth-
erhood, and he found a way that he could
connect in his own way to Judaism and
Israel,” Michael Spivak said.

Spivak was committed to the better-
ment of society through sports. During
his tenure as president, Maccabi USA
supported the Israel (Ilan) Sports
Centre for the Physically Disabled, as
well the opening of a sports and recre-
ation facility in Ben Shimen Forest in
Modi’in, Israel, in 1994.

Throughout his time as president,
Spivak spearheaded the Maccabiah
Games Pre-Camp, which aimed at
providing participants with a cultural
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