Making Maccabi Magic
TED REIDERSON PHOTOGRAPHY
by Jacqueline Bull
22
| SDJEWISHJOURNAL.COM March 2022
When the JCC Maccabi games were set to come to San Diego in 2020, I met with the committee chairs on a sunny day in Del Mar and they told me about how excited they were to have Maccabi in their home city again and the connection they had to the games. A couple months later, the pandemic started, the games were canceled and the fate of the event was left up in the air. Now the games are back this summer (July 31–Aug. 5) and that same committee is moving full steam ahead. An event of this size takes a massive amount of preparation and truly an entire community of hosts and volunteers working together. This Olympic-style event is the largest annual gathering of Jewish teens in the world. The games are set to bring 1,500 Jewish teens, 300 coaches and thousands of families to San Diego this year. This year also marks the 40th anniversary of the games. The games are shaping up to look close to what it would have looked like pre-pandemic. The ArtsFest unfortunately was not able to be brought into 2022, but the San Diego event will still be the first in Maccabi history for the Access Games for Jewish teens with cognitive and developmental disabilities. “We are thrilled to be hosting the long-awaited JCC Maccabi Games in 2022. Not only is our entire community eagerly looking forward to marking four decades of JCC Maccabi magic, we want to embrace the opportunity to rally around this gigantic display of Jewish