Rachel Neiman
September 25, 2017

Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, is also a day without cars on the road. As a result, for secular Israelis, Yom Kippur has become the “bicycle holiday” for riders young and old.

Bicycling is becoming ever-more popular in Israel. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, there was a 21 percent increase in the number of non-motorized two-wheeled vehicles imported to Israel over the most recently recorded four-year period, from 351,950 units in 2012 to 426,542 units in 2015.

But there is still along way to go: this past summer, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation blocked a “bicycle encouragement bill” proposed by the Israel Bicycle Association that would mandate policies for bicycle infrastructure similar to other cycling nations.

No one knows the exact date when the first bicycle rolled into the Middle East but two-wheelers — and Westerners — were a rarity in the Ottoman Empire when, between 1890 and 1893, American students Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben documented their journey across Asia Minor. (Their firsthand account, Across Asia on a Bicycle, includes rare photos taken with the latest innovation of the time, the Kodak box camera.)

Twenty-some years later at the apex of the Golden Age of Bicycling, riders included no less a Zionist luminary than Theodor Herzl.

Theodor Herzl in Altaussee, Austria, 1900. Getty Images photo from Archives of the World Zionist Organization

Because England and Scotland hold partial claim to inventing the modern-day bicycle, the era of the British Mandate certainly played a role in bringing two-wheeled transport to the Holy Land.

Sports organizations Maccabi and Hapoel were also instrumental in popularizing cycling during the pre-State era. The Maccabi World Union was formed at the 1921 World Zionist Congress as an umbrella organization for all Jewish sports associations. The first Maccabiah Games opened on March 28, 1932 in Tel Aviv and included a cycling competition.

Established in 1926 as a union of the Histadrut, and represented the workers class, Hapoel organized its first cycling division in 1930, and held the first road bike race in 1932 on the streets of Tel Aviv. Also at this time, Hapoel developed ties with Jewish communities in Europe, with various delegations of Jewish cyclists and motorcyclists coming to participate in festive sports events.

First of May parade on bikes in Palestine, 1930s or 1940s. Photo from Beit Fisher Kiryat Ata via PikiWiki-Israel

In an interview with Wingate Institute researchers, Arie Doron, who for four decades headed Hapoel’s Cycling Division, recalled a joint Maccabi-Hapoel competition against the British Police in Jerusalem in 1940.

In 1921, Tel Aviv resident Menachem Goldberg began importing Phillips Cycles and Ariel Cycles from Britain to Palestine. With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the new government began setting limits and heavy tariffs on importation, a policy that forced importers like Goldberg to become manufacturers. He established HOC – Harash Ofan Cycles, the state’s first bike factory. In its heyday, HOC employed 50 workers, produced 600 units a month, and had a 40 percent market share.

Harash Ofan advertisement. Photo courtesy of Nostalgia Online

In a 2015 interview with We:Ride, HOC manager Asher Kasher noted that the kibbutz movement was a particularly important customer for HOC, as every child reaching bar or bat mitzva age was awarded a bike.

Bicycle parking on kibbutz. Photo from Gan-Shmuel archive via PikiWiki-Israel

During the 1950s, the new State of Israel boasted five bicycle manufacturers: HOC, Israeli Cycle Manufacturers (ICM), Ophir Dahar, Michelson Cycle Industries (MCI) and Yaacobi&Presenti (now CTC — Cycle Trading Co.).

In 2013, these “blue and white” bicycle makers were part of an exhibition at the Design Museum Holon about bicycle design and cycling culture.

According to David Sela, chairman of the Council for Promoting Israeli Heritage and editor of the Nostalgia Online website, “At first, we all rode Harash Ofan, which was a pretty bad bike. We all liked the English-made Raleigh but these bikes were very rare. They were not imported in the early years of the state so there was only surplus left by the English. Afterwards, a new manufacturer, Ophir Dahar, entered the Israeli market, and that was slightly better than Harash Ofan. Finally, another Israeli manufacturer entered, creating a well-known bike called ICM; the model that was considered best was one without a foot brake, so the wheels could also turn backwards.”

HOC Harash Ofan advertisement. Photo courtesy of Nostalgia Online

There was also the matter of the bicycle license. Nostalgia Online contributor Uri Sharon recalls, “City inspectors used to stop children in the street and check if their bikes had a license. And a license also cost money. And what did the license look like? The bicycle got a number embossed on a piece of metal, which was affixed to one of the mudguards. If inspector caught a child whose bicycle had no number – he would take the air out of the tires… This order was canceled in 1984.”

In 1969, Israel’s first bicycle race for primary school students was held in Kikar HaMedina in Tel Aviv. It was organized by Hapoel youth biking champion Eli Samoucha, who went on to create cycling club Galgalei Etz Racers, which held weekly races from the 1970s through the 1990s.

Jewish New Year postcard with bicyclists. Photo courtesy of the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life

On the racing front, Israel registered with the International Bicycle Federation in 1958. North African immigration in the 1950s raised the country’s competitive level after a number of prominent riders from North Africa came to Israel, bringing with them the strong French cycling tradition. They were settled in Israel’s southern region and for this reason, from the 1950s through to the late 1970s, competitive cycling activity centered around Ramla, Ashkelon and Beersheva.

In the early 1970s, Akiva Reznik, an experienced cycling coach, arrived in Israel from the Soviet Union. He established groups in the northern region and instilled Eastern European training methods that won his riders local and international titles throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1979, the bicycle market underwent a major shift when the import tariff on bicycles was cancelled. The motivation for this action was not free-market ideology, as CLC owner Arie Presenti told We:Ride magazine in 2015.

“The Deputy Finance Minister at the time, Haim Kaufman, who happened to be a big importer of toys, was competing with my father’s factory over a huge tender of 5,000 bicycles for the military. His price offer was outrageously low and there was no chance that we could compete with it under the existing market conditions.

“It turned out that Kaufman had acted behind the scenes to remove the customs duties and thus allowed himself to import ready-made products at a price that a local manufacturer could not beat…  It’s sad when a business you created with your own two hands goes down the drain and imports kill a local factory, even though, in a bizarre twist of fate, we are ourselves importers today…”

In 1980, CLC shifted into high gear to the country’s first importer of BMX bikes, and then, in 1986, of mountain bikes.

Raleigh Chopper ad, 1970s. Photo courtesy of Nostalgia Online

The Israel Cycling Federation was established in the 1980s as a non-profit organization and the sole representative of the International Cycling Union (UCI) and of the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sports in all matters concerning cycling in Israel.

Today, ICF has a general membership of more than 10,500 cyclists and over 60 clubs registered annually. The ICF’s Bikes4All project has established over 100 new youth clubs that bring together Jewish and Arab children in a friendly environment.

Biking for Israeli adults has, for many years, been perceived as a competitive, endurance or leisure-time sport. Cycling as a weekend sport continues to increase in popularity, and there are endless options for off-road trails — including trails developed by the KKL-JNF in forests and open spaces — but only recently has biking as a means of daily urban transport gained acceptance.

In 2008, Alon Wolf opened a Bicycle Museum on Moshav Herev Le’et, south of Hadera. Jerusalem’s Bloomfield Science Museum has a major bicycle exhibition running through May 3, 2018.

The “2×200” bicycle exhibit at Jerusalem’s Bloomfield Science Museum through May 3, 2018. Photo by AviHayon

In 2010, Tel Aviv initiated its “green bike” rental scheme, Tel-O-Fun, and tripled the budget for constructing bike lanes. Jerusalem does not yet have a bike rental program but bike lane construction has progressed.

In 2014, the first Israeli professional team, the Israel Cycling Academy, was launched. In 2016, Israel competed for the first time in 56 years in a cycling event, at the Rio Olympic Games.

And the big news for Israel’s competitive cyclists? In May 2018, the world-famous international Giro d’Italia will, for the first time, start its Grand Tour outside of Europe, in Jerusalem. Another milestone in our cycling history.

More on Life

More on Spotlight on Israel