JTA — Among the thousands of athletes preparing to descend on the City of Lights for the Paralympics, the Olympic companion competition for athletes with physical disabilities, are a number of Jewish sporting figures to watch.
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.
Israel is sending a delegation of 27 athletes to the Paralympics, while Jewish competitors at the Games will also hail from the US, Canada and Brazil. Here are some of the Jewish Paralympians to watch in Paris:
Peter Berry, US 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.
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Peter is a member of the US national team that won gold at the 2023 Parapan American Games. He is an alternate for the US at the 2024 Paralympics. The Berry brothers were featured on JTA’s 2023 list of Jewish student-athletes to watch.
Ezra Frech, US track star with a world record in high jump
American Paralympic athlete Ezra Frech during an interview on April 15, 2024 in New York. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)
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 US 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, US 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.
Tahl Leibovitz in July 2024 (Courtesy USA Table Tennis)
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.
Jody Schloss, Canadian equestrian who used her sport to overcome disability
Jody Schloss and her horse Leitenant Lobin compete at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, Aug. 27, 2021, in Tokyo. (Alex Pantling/Getty Images via JTA)
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
American para table tennis player Ian Seidenfeld, 22, poses for a portrait on April 17, 2024 in New York. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)
After winning a gold medal at his Paralympics debut in Tokyo, US 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.
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.
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