The 2024 Paris Olympics have concluded, and now a new set of athletes are preparing to descend on the City of Light for the Paralympics, the Olympic companion competition for athletes with physical disabilities.
The Games, which were founded by the late German-Jewish doctor Ludwig Guttman, will feature over 4,000 athletes competing in 22 sports from Aug. 28 through Sept. 8. (Each event has a classification code based on the extent of the athlete’s “impairment.”)
At the Olympics, Jewish athletes enjoyed notable success, with at least 21 athletes from the United States, Australia, and Israel winning 18 total medals, including an all-time record seven for Israel.
In the Paralympics, Jewish athletes will hail from the U.S., Brazil, Canada, and Israel, in sports ranging from table tennis and swimming to goalball — a sport designed for people with vision impairment — and rowing.
Israel is sending a delegation of 28 athletes — 14 men and 14 women — to the Paralympics, including an Oct. 7 survivor and a number of returning medalists. The cohort also includes a Druze athlete and three Muslim athletes, the Israel Paralympic Committee told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Israel won nine medals — including six golds — at the most recent Paralympic Games in Tokyo, and has 384 total medals in the Games dating back to the inaugural Summer Paralympics in 1960. Tel Aviv hosted the tournament in 1968.
Paris 2024 organizers had arranged 24/7 security for Israel’s Olympic delegation, which had faced death threats and antisemitic chants from fans — and French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Israel’s Paralympic delegation would also receive round-the-clock protection.
“Concerning the security of the Israeli delegation in Paris, the role of the Organising Committee is to provide athletes from all over the world, including Israel, with the best possible safety conditions, and as such we are in regular contact with the delegation,” a spokesperson for Paris 2024 told JTA.
Here are some of the Jewish and Israeli Paralympians to watch in Paris.
Is there a Jewish or Israeli Paralympian we should keep an eye on? Shoot us a message at sports@jta.org!
Adam Berdichevsky, Oct 7. survivor and Israeli wheelchair tennis player
Adam Berdichevsky hails from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak near the Gaza border, which lost seven people on Oct. 7. (Lilach Weiss Rosenberg; Courtesy of the Israel Paralympic Committee)
Israeli Adam Berdichevsky is returning for his third Paralympics, less than a year after his community was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7. Berdichevsky, 41, hails from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak near the Gaza border, which lost seven people on Oct. 7, with five hostages taken alive by Hamas. Berdichevsky and his wife and three children hid in their home for 14 hours before being rescued and evacuated to Eilat.
Now Berdichevsky is one of Israel’s flag bearers for the Paralympics, along with goalball player Lihi Ben David.
“This year has been, and still is, unbearable,” Berdichevsky said in a statement. Describing what motivated him to compete in the Paralympics despite the challenges he faced this year, he cited “the strong desire to represent the country during these times, and the support from my family.”
Peter Berry, U.S. wheelchair basketball national champion
Peter Berry helped the University of Alabama win the National Intercollegiate Wheelchair Basketball Tournament in 2023. (Courtesy of University of Alabama)
When he was nine years old, Peter Berry, 22, and his family were involved in a car crash that killed his parents and left him and his younger brother Aaron paralyzed from the waist down. The Berry brothers, who attended Jewish day school as kids in Houston, soon discovered wheelchair basketball. They’d go on to help the University of Alabama win the National Intercollegiate Wheelchair Basketball Tournament in 2023.
Peter is a member of the U.S. national team that won gold at the 2023 Parapan American Games. He is an alternate for the U.S. at the 2024 Paralympics. The Berry brothers were featured on JTA’s 2023 list of Jewish student-athletes to watch.
Ami Dadon, two-time Israeli Paralympic gold medalist swimmer
Ami Dadon, left, with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Mark Malyar after the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics. (Wikimedia Commons)
Israeli swimmer Ami Dadon won three medals at the Tokyo Paralympics: Gold in the 200-meter freestyle S4 (an event in which he set the world record), gold in the 50-meter freestyle S4, and silver in the 150-meter individual medley. Dadon, 23, also won seven gold medals at World Championships in 2022 and 2023, and nine golds at European Championships between 2018 and 2024. Dadon won an Israeli Paralympic sportsman of the year award in 2023.
Ezra Frech, U.S. track star with a world record in high jump
Ezra Frech competes in the men’s long jump T63 final at the World Para Athletics Championships, May 19, 2024, in Kobe, Japan. (Paul Miller/Getty Images)
No matter how he places in Paris, 2024 has already been a banner year for Ezra Frech, the 19-year-old track and field star who broke his own world record in the high jump T63 at the U.S. Paralympics trials on July 20. He will compete in the long jump T63 in Paris.
Frech, who was born missing his left knee and shinbone, and with only one finger on his left hand, is the son of a Persian-Jewish mother. He won gold medals in the high jump T63 at the 2023 World Championships and the 2019 World Junior Championships.
“I want my legacy to be the greatest Paralympian of all time and to be known as someone who changed the way the Paralympics are viewed forever,” Frech told NBC earlier this year.
Tahl Leibovitz, U.S. gold medalist table tennis player
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