The 2026 Maccabiah will open next Wednesday with a ceremony at Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem, launching the 22nd edition of the Jewish sports event first held in the spring of 1932.
Over the decades, the “Jewish Olympics” has brought together athletes from around the world, many of whom have proudly embraced their Jewish identity. While the stars on this list will not be competing in the current Maccabiah, they are among the Jewish athletes making their mark on the global stage, and perhaps some of them could still appear at a future Maccabiah in 2030.
Amit Elor: The wrestler who ‘represents the US and Israel’
Few Israeli sports fans need an introduction to Amit Elor, the freestyle wrestler who became an Olympic champion at the Paris Games two years ago.
Elor, a two-time world champion, is an American Jew of Israeli descent. Her family lives in Israel, and she speaks Hebrew. She visits Israel often, speaks out on social media against antisemitism and regularly mentions in interviews that both of her grandfathers survived the Holocaust.
Her father, Yair Elor, a former Israeli shot put champion, moved to the United States with his wife, Ilana, in the 1970s. Together, they raised a family of wrestlers, with Amit, the youngest of five siblings, becoming the family’s greatest sporting success.
“I represent the US and also Israel,” Elor told ynet in an interview two years ago. “I am Israeli and American, and after what I saw on October 7, it is important for me to bring joy to Israel. I know that if I represent Israel, it will make my parents proud, and I will be proud of myself too. Israel is my second home.”
Jessica and Noemie Fox: The queens of canoe slalom
Australian Jewish sisters Jessica and Noemie Fox became global stars after winning Olympic gold medals at the 2024 Paris Games.
Canoeing runs deep in the Fox family. Their mother, Myriam Fox-Jerusalmi, competed at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and won a bronze medal while representing France. Their father, Richard Fox, is a former world champion and one of the leading figures in the sport. He also competed at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics while representing Britain.
One of the greatest in the sport: Jessica Fox
(Photo: Sona Maleterova/Getty Images)
Jessica, the older sister, is considered one of the most successful canoe slalom athletes in history. She left Paris with two gold medals, in the K1 kayak and C1 canoe events. She also won gold and bronze in Tokyo 2020, bronze in Rio 2016 and silver in London 2012, where she made her Olympic debut at just 18. At 32, she has already won 30 gold medals in major international competitions, along with seven silver and nine bronze medals.
Noemie Fox in action
(Photo: Sona Maleterova/Getty Images)
Noemie, three years younger than Jessica, also reached the Olympic podium in Paris, winning a historic gold medal in kayak cross, a new Olympic event. Her victory completed a remarkable family achievement. Over the past two years, she has also won silver and bronze medals at the world championships.
The sisters proudly acknowledge their Jewish identity, though they do not lead a strictly religious lifestyle. Jewish heritage remains an integral part of who they are. After October 7, Jessica wrote on Instagram that she was proud to be Jewish and proud to have family and friends in Israel, describing the country as free, diverse and liberal. In the same post, she urged followers to donate to Magen David Adom.
Maia Weintraub: A rising star in world fencing
Maia Weintraub is considered one of the great rising talents in world fencing after helping the U.S. women’s foil team win a historic Olympic gold medal, the first ever for an American women’s team in the event.
Weintraub was called in as a substitute at a critical moment in the final against Italy, showed remarkable composure and won her bouts as the U.S. team secured a 45-39 victory.
Second from left: Maia Weintraub with Team USA
(Photo: AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
The fencer was born and raised in Philadelphia. Her father, Jason Weintraub, works in entomology, the study of insects, and her mother, Elizabeth, is a retired lawyer who immigrated from Singapore. Weintraub currently competes for Princeton University.
She defines herself as a proud Jew, and as part of her connection to global Jewish sports, she represented the United States at the 2019 European Maccabi Games, where she won a gold medal.
The U.S. fencing team in Paris included six Jewish athletes out of 20 total competitors, a detail that drew coverage in Jewish media around the world.
Emery Lehman: The decorated Olympic speed skater
Emery Lehman is well known to fans of the Winter Olympics. The Jewish American speed skater represented the United States in four Olympic Games: Sochi 2014, Pyeongchang 2018, Beijing 2022 and Milan-Cortina 2026.
He qualified for the Sochi Games at just 17, becoming the youngest male speed skater in the history of the U.S. Olympic delegation. In his two most recent Olympic appearances, he reached the podium in the team pursuit event, winning bronze in Beijing in 2022 and silver in Milan in 2026.
Emery Lehman
(Photo: Luca Bruno/ AP)
Together with Team USA, Lehman also became a world champion in 2025 and was part of three world-record performances over the course of his career. The 2026 Games were described by Lehman as his final professional appearance before retirement at age 30.
Lehman was born and raised in Illinois. He was brought up with Jewish tradition, attended Hebrew school and went to synagogue several times a week as a child. In 2018, he also took part in Birthright, the program that brings young American Jews to Israel.
To combine elite training with academics, he studied civil engineering at Marquette University, a Catholic Jesuit institution in Missouri. In interviews, he has joked that as one of the few Jewish students on campus, Christian theology exams were a far bigger challenge for him than skating on ice. The experience, he said, made him even prouder to represent the Jewish people in global sports.
The 2026 Maccabiah will be held from July 1 to July 13, bringing together thousands of athletes, families and sports fans from around the world. This year’s games will be held under the slogan More Than Ever and will feature more than 8,000 athletes from about 45 countries competing in roughly 45 sports.
The games had originally been scheduled for last summer, but were postponed because of Operation Rising Lion.