Background
Yekutieli was born in Kartuz-Bereza in the Russian Empire (now in western Belarus) in 1897.
Yekutieli was born in Kartuz-Bereza in the Russian Empire (now in western Belarus) in 1897.
He studied at the Tachkemoni Religious School in Tel Aviv and later at the David Yellin College of Education in Jerusalem.
In 1909, at the age of nine, he immigrated to Ottoman Palestine with his family. After completing his studies Yekutieli return to Jaffa working for the Eretz Yisrael Office, later playing football for the Maccabi Tel Aviv until the outbreak of World War I.
In 1914 Yekutieli was drafted to the Turkish army and was appointed physical education instructor at the Mujahideen headquarters and at the public school in Nablus. Yekutieli served as a Turkish-German interpreter at the German transport companies K.K. 502., until being exiled to Anatolia in 1918, along with all the other Jewish military members.
At the end of the war, Yekutieli returned to Jaffa working for the Eretz Yisrael Office at the Zionist Commission and Palestine Land Development Company.
Foreign two years he worked for the Israel Electric Corporation acquiring land rights for high-voltage power lines from Naharayim to Tel Aviv. Following his return to Palestine at the end of war, Yekutieli operated and ran the "Maccabi" until his death.
He was the driving force behind the foundation of sport institutions in Israel, including the Eretz Israel Football Association in 1928, the Federation for Amateur Sports in Palestine (now the Israeli Athletic Association) in 1931 and the Olympic Committee of Eretz Israel in 1933. Maccabiah
In June 1929, at the World Congress of Maccabi in Czechoslovakia, Yekutieli announced his proposal to organize the first Maccabiah, the "Maccabiada" (Hebrew: המכביאדה), in the spring of 1932, to be held in Mandatory Palestine.
The road to fulfilling the vision was long and difficult.
The 1932 Maccabiah Games were opened on March 28, 1932 and were held in the Maccabiah Stadium, which had been built especially for the games in the northern part of Tel Aviv. Around 400 athletes from 22 nations participated in the games, which became a recurring event every four years, except during World World War II and the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Later years
After the formation of Israel in 1948, Yekutieli was appointed as a senior official of the government"s abandoned property committee.
Yekutieli retired in 1966.
In 1971 he released his first book, an autobiography. Their son, Gideon Yekutieli, was a professor of physics, the first Israeli nuclear physicist.
In June 2008, in a ceremony attended by Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, the Yosef Yekutieli street in North Portuguese, near the first Maccabiah Stadium was named after him. In Modi"in-Maccabim-Re"ut, a road has been named after him.
The Joseph Yekutieli Maccabi Archive at Kfar Maccabiah is also named after him.