JANUARY 27 • 2022 | 39

T

he JCC Maccabi Games 
are back.
Or, perhaps more 
appropriately, starting again 40 
years after they began.
After an unprecedented 
two-year hiatus caused by the 
COVID-19 pandemic, the 
annual Olympic-style sports, 
cultural and social event for 
Jewish teens ages 13-16 will 
return this summer in San 
Diego.
It appears 22 Detroit 
athletes will attend, perhaps 
a few more, a steep drop in 
attendance from previous 
years.
There aren’t enough Detroit 
athletes to form a team in any 
team sport. Detroit athletes will 

join forces with athletes from 
other communities to create 
teams.
These facts create a mixed 
bag of emotions for Karen 
Gordon, a Detroit Maccabi 
delegation head since 1999.
“I’m excited the Maccabi 
Games will be held for the first 
time since we (Detroit) were 
a host in 2019. It’s a sign that 
all is right with the world. It 
gives us a sense of normalcy,” 
she said.
“But I’m disappointed, of 
course, that we don’t have more 
athletes going.
“When it was announced last 
summer that San Diego would 
be hosting the Maccabi Games 
in 2022, I said at the time that 

we’d have kids coming out of 
the woodwork, or we’d have a 
hard time fielding teams. It’s 
the latter.”
Gordon pointed to several 
reasons for Detroit’s small 
turnout.
“Unfortunately, we’re not 

done with COVID,” she said.
“
Also, there isn’t a ‘last 
year’ or ‘year before’ for kids 
to talk about their Maccabi 
Games experiences with their 
family and friends. We’ve lost 
a generation of kids. We’re 
starting over.”
Gordon said it’s also 
possible that families had a 
choice between sending their 
children to summer camp 
or the Maccabi Games and 
chose camp if they had a good 
experience last year.
The JCC Association 
of North America, which 
organizes and conducts the 
Maccabi Games, has decreed 
that all Maccabi Games 
participants in San Diego — 
athletes, coaches, organizers 
and staff — must be vaccinated 
against COVID-19.
Also, members of host 
families who can be vaccinated 
must be vaccinated.
“We lost a couple kids 
because of the vaccination 
mandate,” Gordon said.
Detroit has had more than 
100 teens travel to Maccabi 
Games sites in recent years. 
ArtsFest joined the Maccabi 
Games offerings in 2006.
Perhaps the high-water mark 
in recent attendance for the 
Detroit Maccabi delegation 
was in 2006, when 90 teens 
went to Vancouver on a charter 
plane, and another 30 went to 
Phoenix.
“It’s the only time we’ve used 
a charter plane,” Gordon said.
Three years later, 96 Detroit 
teens went to Mid-Westchester 
(New York), 21 went to San 
Francisco and 10 went to San 

About two dozen athletes will represent Detroit this 
summer at the revived JCC Maccabi Games.
Small but Mighty

continued on page 40

STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

KAREN GORDON
KAREN GORDON

Karen 
Gordon

SPORTS

Participants in the JCC Maccabi 
Games & ArtsFest in Detroit in 
2019 filled a blank wall at the 
closing party with thoughts about 
what Maccabi means to them.

