Ezra Frech, Ian Seidenfeld, an October 7 Survivor and 12 other Jewish and Israeli Athletes To Watch at the 2024 Paris Olympics

September 2024

By Jacob Gurvis

August 23, 2024(JTA) The 2024 Paris Olympics have concluded, and now thousands 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.

Adam Berdichevsky, Oct 7. survivor and Israeli wheelchair tennis player

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

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

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

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

Nearly three decades after making his Paralympics debut, table tennis champion Tahl Leibovitz returns for his seventh Paralympics. Leibovitz won a gold and a bronze medal at his first Games in 1996 to go along with a bronze in 2004, six gold medals at Parapan American games between 2007 and 2019 and a bronze at the 1998 World Championships. Leibovitz, 49, was experiencing homelessness when he participated in a table tennis program for at-risk youth in his hometown of New York City. In 1995, he learned that his osteochondroma — overgrowth of cartilage and bone, characterized by sometimes-painful noncancerous bone tumors — qualified him for the Paralympic Games. He reached the No. 2 world ranking in his disability class in 2008. He is a member of the US Table Tennis Hall Of Fame.

Alison Levine, Canadian former No. 1 world-ranked boccia player

Canadian boccia competitor Alison Levine is in Paris for her third Paralympics. She was diagnosed with idiopathic muscular dystrophy as a teenager. Levine, 34, is the No. 2 ranked woman BC4 boccia player in the world, and in 2019-2020 was ranked No. 1 — which at the time made her the first woman to earn the top ranking in what was then a mixed-gender sport. Levine, a Jewish day school alum, won two gold medals at the 2023 Parapan American Games — one in individual and one in pairs — and a silver at the 2015 competition. Israeli gold medalist swimmer Mark Malyar and his twin brother Ariel.

Israeli twins Ariel and Mark Malyar, 24, who were born with cerebral palsy, are returning for their second Paralympics. Mark won two gold medals in 2020 — one in the 200-meter medley SM7 and one in the 400-meter freestyle S7, setting world records in both — and one bronze. Mark has also won one gold, one silver and four bronze medals at world championships between 2017 and 2023, plus one gold, three silvers and three bronzes at the 2018 and 2020 European Championships.

In Tokyo, Ariel competed in the men’s 100-meter freestyle S4, the 200-meter freestyle S4, the 50-meter freestyle S4 and the 50-meter backstroke S4. He advanced to the final in the 50-meter event, finishing in seventh.

Moran Samuel, Israeli fourtime Paralympic rower and two-time medalist

Israeli Paralympic rower Moran Samuel is returning for her fourth consecutive Games, where she won bronze in 2016 and then silver in Tokyo. Samuel, 42, suffered a spinal stroke in 2006, paralyzing her lower body. Samuel has won a gold, three silvers and two bronzes at World Championships between 2011 and 2019, plus a silver at the 2023 European Championships and a gold and two bronzes at World Rowing Cups. She also played for Israel’s women’s national basketball team before her injury, and later represented Israel in the 2013 European Wheelchair Basketball Championship. She was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2023.

In 2012, Samuel won a race in single scull competition at a rowing tournament in Italy, but the event organizers did not have a recording of the Israeli national anthem — so she sang it herself.

Guy Sasson, Israeli French Open champion Israeli tennis star Guy Sasson returns for his second Paralympics, this time as a Grand Slam champion. Sasson, 44, started playing tennis in 2018 after he was paralyzed from a ski accident in 2015. Sasson won the quad singles tournament at the 2024 French Open, his first career Grand Slam victory. Sasson, who is ranked No. 3 in the world in his classification, had also made it to the finals in doubles at both the French and Australian Opens this year, as well as the semifinals in both singles and doubles at Wimbledon.

Sasson dedicated his French Open victory in June to Israel, which had just learned that four hostages had been rescued in a military operation from Gaza.

“This belongs to Israel,” he said, according to Israeli sports site One. “I just learned the good news, and the announcement that four hostages have returned alive. I dedicate my achievement to the four of them and the rest of the hostages who are still there.”

Jody Schloss, Canadian equestrian who used her sport to overcome disability

Jewish day school alum Jody Schloss is returning for her third Paralympics, where she will represent Canada in the individual and team equestrian competitions. Schloss, 52, was in a car accident at age 23 that put her in a five-month coma and ultimately left her unable to walk and with a speech disability.

Schloss, who had been riding horses since she was 11, turned to equestrian sports as part of her recovery. She placed 11th in both the 2012 London Paralympics and the Tokyo Games. She also competed at the World Equestrian Games in 2018 and 2022.

Ian Seidenfeld, second-generation gold medalist

After winning a gold medal at his Paralympics debut in Tokyo, table tennis star Ian Seidenfeld will look for a repeat performance in Paris. Seidenfeld, 23, was born with Pseudoachondroplasia dwarfism, an inherited bone growth disorder.

Seidenfeld’s father, Mitch, who competed at three Paralympics and won four medals, including a gold in 1992, has the same condition. The younger Seidenfeld started playing table tennis at 6 years old and began competing internationally at 12. In addition to his 2020 gold, Seidenfeld also won gold medals at the 2019 and 2023 Parapan American Games.

Iyad Shalabi, Israeli-Arab gold medalist swimmer

Arab-Israeli swimmer Iyad Shalabi is returning for his fifth consecutive Paralympics. He was born deaf and became paralyzed at age 13 after falling from a rooftop. Now 37, Shalabi won two gold medals in Tokyo — one in the 100-meter backstroke S1 and one in the 50-meter backstroke S1 — making him the first Arab-Israeli to win an individual medal in either the Olympics or the Paralympics.

Shalabi, who competes in the S1 classification, which indicates the most severe level of disability, also won a silver and a bronze medal at the 2023 World Championships, and a gold and two bronzes at European Championships in 2018 and 2020.

Israel Pereira Stroh, Brazilian table tennis champion

Brazilian table tennis champion Israel Pereira Stroh is a former gold medalist at the 2013 Pan American Championships, in addition to being a silver medalist at that competition, the 2015 Parapan American Games and the 2016 Paralympics. The 37-year-old Sao Paulo native has cerebral palsy and was the first Brazilian to medal in a singles event at the Paralympics. Stroh represents the Hebraica Jewish club in Sao Paulo.

Asaf Yasur, two-time taekwondo world champion

Israeli taekwondo competitor Asaf Yasur, 22, a two-time world champion, is making his Paralympics debut. He had both his hands amputated at age 13 after an electrocution. Yasur won the 2021 and 2023 World Para Taekwondo Championships, to go along with a gold medal at the 2024 European Championships and a silver at the 2023 European Para Championships, all in the 58-kilogram class. Yasur trains at the Sharabi Martial Arts club in Ramla, Israel.