In November 2024, Kansas City was officially selected to host the 2026 JCC Maccabi Games.

I remember the pride and excitement as our team began to work out what would lead to the best experience I’ve had in my 27-year career at The J.

We welcomed thousands of people into our community. 820 visiting athletes. 200 coaches. Parents and spectators from all over. Delegations from across North America and from Israel, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Mexico and Panama.

We hosted dozens of competitions at venues scattered across the metro.

We organized meals, buses, security, athletic trainers, opening and closing ceremonies, community service projects and evening programs.

We hosted five days that needed to be seamless and run smoothly to those visiting from Tel Aviv to Toledo.

Eighteen months later, those five days are behind us. While they may have looked effortless, I know they were anything but. These five days were a testament to the incredible community we have here in Kansas City. The community stepped up and stepped in to help make these Games something to remember and to make a lasting impact on teens from around the globe.

Thank you first to our amazing volunteers

We needed 1,100 shifts filled, and our community jumped at the chance to fill those before the first athlete landed. People took vacation days to hand out water bottles in the August heat. They timed swimming, ran scoreboards, staffed registration tables and simply showed up. Many of them are not members of The J, and some are not Jewish, but they showed up because Kansas City had said “yes” to something, and when we commit, we do it wholeheartedly. We saw many familiar faces working alongside volunteers who were connecting with the community for the very first time.

Thank you to our host families

Roughly 300 households opened their homes to teenagers they had never met, feeding them, driving them to competitions, cheering for them, and maybe even washing a smelly jersey or two. If you want to understand what makes JCC Maccabi different from any other youth tournament, it is this. These kids didn’t stay in a hotel. They stayed in our community, at our tables, in our neighborhoods.

Several of those families have already told me they are staying in touch with their athletes. Hosts may not realize the impact they’ve had on their teens as well, but in 2040 or 2041 when many of these teenagers may be adults with their own families, they’ll fondly remember when a family welcomed them with open arms and consider doing the same in their community.

Thank you to our donors, who made the math work

An event of this size does not happen on registration fees. It happens because individuals, families, foundations and local businesses decided that investing in our youth and cultivating a sense of Jewish pride was important. I am grateful for their trust.

And to our athletes, thank you

Kansas City had its largest delegation in the history of these Games. They trained for months, competed at home in front of everyone they know, and served as hosts and ambassadors at the same time, which is a harder job than it sounds. I could not be prouder of how they carried themselves.

The Games were founded in 1982 to strengthen Jewish teens’ connection to one another and to global Jewry. We hosted once before, in 1997, when nearly 650 teens came, considerably less than what our community hosted this year. More than 130,000 young people have come through this program since it began. Standing in the stands last week, watching a kid from Kansas City trade pins with one from Bulgaria, I understood the number differently. It is not a statistic. It is a network of relationships, rebuilt every summer, in a different city, by people willing to do the work in their communities.

The J’s mission is to build a strong, vibrant and inclusive community grounded in Jewish values, heritage and culture. For one week, that mission had 3,000 witnesses.

To every volunteer, host family, donor, coach, staff member, partner organization and athlete: thank you. You did not just put on an event. You showed a thousand young people what a community looks like when it decides to be one.

Now let’s go be that community on an ordinary Tuesday too, when you walk into The J for your next workout, pickleball game, daycare drop off or just to catch up with a community stronger than it was a week ago.