7m accabi

In The Spirit

JUDAH MACCABEE

3,000 athletes in Detroit's Maccabi Games
reflect an increasingly vital tradition.

LONNY GOLDSMITH Section Editor

n

erb Bernstein was the Detroit
Maccabi swim coach when 300
athletes took part in the inaugur-
al Jewish Community Center
Maccabi Games in Memphis in 1982.
Bernstein is the still the coach 16 years
later, and has seen the event grow to 4,400
athletes last year when the Games were in six
different cities. More than 3,000 athletes —
59 delegations from cities in the United
States and Canada and national teams from
Great Britain, Mexico, Venezuela and Israel
— are expected to participate starting
Sunday in Detroit.
Athletically, "the competition has grown
immensely and the kids have gotten better at
all aspects of the sports," Bernstein said. "But
it's the Jewish experience that's important.
Seeing all the Jewish kids has kept me doing
this."
The Maccabi Games are a yearly athletic
and cultural event for Jewish teenagers 13 to
16 years old. This year will be the first since
1992 that the Maccabi Games will be a week
long and include a Shabbat for the athletes
to spend with their host families.
Some of the delegations that are attending
keep their athletes involved throughout the
year in Maccabi-related activities.
The name Maccabi comes from Judah
Maccabee, with Jewish sports clubs in
Europe and Israel using the name of the hero
of the Chanukah story.
"The Jewish Community Center move-
ment has taken this program and seen the
value of serving teens," said Lenny
Silberman, the continental director of the

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M4 Detroit Jewish News

JCC Maccabi Games. "It's become a premier
event."
The sports run the usual gamut of teenage
activities — baseball, softball, basketball, soc-
cer, and so on. And the players could easily
be competing in more secular venues, such as
Little League or middle school teams. The
Maccabi Games, however, combine the ath-
letics with the culture of being Jewish.
According to Amy Rosenberg, continental
games coordinator, it was important to reach
out to Jewish teens in their formative years.
'After bar or bat mitzvah is the group any
Jewish movement typically loses," she said.
"This is a way to link them to the JCC and
keep them affiliated."
Silberman sees the games as unique from
several different angles.
For one thing, the athletes stay with other
Jewish families in the cities they visit, he
said. For another, the competitions are both
round robin and knockout. "If you lose, you
don't go home. Even the kids that lose
don't lose."
Beth Kellman,
the Detroit
games director
in 1990 and
1998. says the
appeal to the athletes is that
Maccabi is a different kind of
athletic opportunity and a dif-
ferent Jewish experience.
"Kids get to travel and meet
other kids their age," she
said. "One generation tells
it to the next." El