ABSTRACT
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the marriage of Christian religious ideals and the philosophy of physical culture established a cultural ideology stressing the importance of sports participation and physical prowess that remains in Western sport today. Contemporary theorists interested in sport have detailed the pivotal role the muscular Christian movement has had in shaping Western perceptions of sport and physical exercise (Ladd and Mathison 1999; Putney 2001; MacAloon 2006). The blending of religion and sports philosophy created clear and justified connections between the norms and values of Christian theology and physical activity. Religious sports movements are evidence of shifts in how Western societies conceive of the body, physical activity, and the fundamental way human beings perceive themselves in the world. 1 Though Europe maintained a predominantly Christian population, there were non-Christians 2 whose theological epistemologies were not as open to the physical exercise movements of the time; in this light, this essay focuses on Jewish tradition and the physical movements that arose from it in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
