When thousands of Jewish athletes arrive in Israel for the 2026 Maccabiah, they will come to compete. But they will also be doing something much larger than sport.
They will be showing up. And at this moment in Jewish history, that matters.
Masa Fellows take part in a sports event in Tel Aviv. Credit: Masa Israel Journey
Around the world, many Jews are searching for ways to deepen their relationship with Israel beyond headlines, advocacy, campus debates, social media, and moments of crisis. These forms of engagement matter. They reflect care, solidarity, and responsibility. But the deepest connections are often formed through lived experience: through people, places, language, culture, challenge, and shared moments of joy.
That is part of what has always made the Maccabiah so powerful.
It is more than an athletic event. It is a celebration of Jewish strength, pride, excellence, and peoplehood. It is a defining moment when Jews from around the world gather in Israel not only to represent their countries, but to take part in a shared Jewish story.
Masa Fellows take part in a sports event in Tel Aviv. Credit: Masa Israel Journey
That sense of participation has always been central to Zionism. For generations, Jews have built their connection to Israel by coming here. What feels especially important today is the urgency of renewing that living connection for a new generation.
Young Jews today are growing up in an increasingly complex world. They encounter Israel through headlines, campus debates, social media, family conversations, moments of crisis, and competing narratives. Many are asking serious questions about identity, belonging, responsibility, and their place in the future of the Jewish people. At the same time, many have missed formative opportunities to experience Israel firsthand, whether because of the Covid years, the war, travel disruptions, or the uncertainty that has shaped Jewish life in recent years.
Those questions should not worry us. They should remind us of our responsibility to create deeper, more meaningful opportunities for connection.
A living relationship with Israel is built through experience. It is built through encounters with people, through shared language, through moments of challenge and responsibility, and through moments of joy. It is built when Israel becomes not only an idea, a cause, or a headline, but a place of real relationships and personal meaning.
That is what makes the Maccabiah so powerful.
Masa Fellows take part in a sports event in Tel Aviv. Credit: Masa Israel Journey
Athletes will run, swim, train, compete, cheer, sing, march, and celebrate together in the Jewish state. They will meet peers from around the world. They will encounter Israeli society not from a distance, but up close. They will represent something larger than themselves, and in doing so, they will experience Jewish peoplehood in a way that is difficult to explain but impossible to forget.
At Masa Israel Journey, we see this same transformation every day. Young Jews arrive in Israel from every corner of the world. Some come with strong Jewish backgrounds. Others come with questions. Some arrive with confidence, others with hesitation. They come to study, volunteer, intern, teach, build careers, learn Hebrew, meet Israelis, and discover more about themselves.
Masa Fellows take part in a sports event in Tel Aviv. Credit: Masa Israel Journey
And something happens when Israel becomes a lived experience – It becomes part of their story.
That is the power of participation. It turns identity from something abstract into something remembered. It allows young Jews to see not only the complexity of Israeli society, but also its creativity, resilience, humanity, diversity, and extraordinary capacity for life.
In 2026, that capacity for life carries particular meaning.
Since October 7, the Jewish people have carried immense grief. Families have been shattered. Communities have been shaken. Young Jews around the world have faced hostility, isolation, confusion, and fear. In such a moment, joy can feel complicated. Celebration can feel difficult.
But Jewish joy has never meant ignoring pain. It means refusing to let pain have the final word.
When Jewish athletes march into stadiums in Israel, when delegations from around the world wave their flags, when Hebrew mixes with Spanish, French, English, Russian, Portuguese, and other languages, when young Jews celebrate together in the Jewish state – that is a reflection of Jewish defiance at its best.
That choice is not simple or naive. It is one of the oldest and most courageous choices the Jewish people know how to make. We mourn, we remember, we carry our pain with us. And still, we build, gather, sing, compete, create, and move forward.
The Maccabiah reminds us that Jewish continuity is built not only in institutions, conferences, campaigns, or statements. It is built in moments when young Jews feel that they are part of something alive. It is built when an athlete from Argentina becomes friends with an Israeli teammate, when a participant from France sees Jerusalem not only as a symbol but as a living city, when a young Jew who arrived for sport leaves with a deeper sense of belonging.
The challenge, of course, is what happens after the closing ceremony.
The lights will go down. The medals will be packed. The delegations will return home. But the deeper question will remain: how do we turn a powerful moment of Jewish pride into a lasting relationship with Israel and the Jewish people?
That is where our work begins.
Masa Fellows. Credit: Masa Israel Journey
The Maccabiah can open a door. Masa and organizations like it help young Jews walk through it. We must offer pathways not only to visit Israel, but to live here for a meaningful period of time. Not only to support Israel, but to contribute to it. Not only to feel inspired for a few days, but to build relationships, leadership, and purpose that last.
Because the future of Israel-Diaspora relations depends on young Jews who feel that they are part of the story. Young Jews who come to Israel and discover that it is not only a place to defend, but a place to experience. Not only a country in the news, but a society of people. Not only an inheritance, but an invitation.
The 2026 Maccabiah will crown champions in sport. But its greater victory may be measured in something harder to count: thousands of young Jews who come to Israel at a defining moment and leave with a deeper understanding that Jewish life is not something they are watching from the outside. They are part of it.
That has always been at the heart of Zionism. And now, more than ever, it is the connection we must strengthen.