By Jacob Gurvis
PARIS — The 2024 Paris Olympics have concluded, and now a new set of athletes descend on the City of Light for the Paralympic 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, 21 Jewish athletes from the US, Australia and Israel won 18 total medals, including an all-time record seven for Israel.
In the Paralympics, Jewish athletes will hail from the US, Brazil, Canada and Israel.
Israel is sending a delegation of 28 athletes — 14 men and 14 women — including an Oct. 7 survivor. The cohort also includes a Druze athlete and three Muslim athletes.
Israel won nine medals — including six golds — at the last Paralympics in Tokyo, and has 384 total medals dating back to the inaugural summer Paralympics in 1960. Tel Aviv hosted the tournament in 1968.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Israel’s Paralympic delegation would also receive round-the-clock protection.
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.
Berdichevsky is one of Israel’s flag bearers for the Paralympics, along with Lihi Ben David.
“This year has been, and still is, unbearable,” Berdichevsky said.
Describing his motivation to compete 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, 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, discovered wheelchair basketball. They’d go on to help the University of Alabama win the National Intercollegiate Wheelchair Basketball Tournament in 2023.
Ami Dadon, two-time Israeli Paralympic gold medalist swimmer
Israeli swimmer Ami Dadon, 23, 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.
He won an Israeli Paralympic sportsman of the year award in 2023.
Ezra Frech, US track star with a world record in high jump
Ezra Frech, 19, 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.
“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.
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, 49, was homeless 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 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 is a Jewish day school alum.
Israeli gold medalist swimmer Mark Malyar and his twin brother Ariel
Israeli twins Ariel and Mark Malyar, 24, were born with cerebral palsy. 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.
Moran Samuel, Israeli four-time Paralympic rower and two-time medalist
Israeli Paralympic rower Moran Samuel is returning for her fourth consecutive Games.
Samuel, 42, suffered a spinal stroke in 2006, paralyzing her lower body.
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 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.
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.
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.
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, making him the first Arab-Israeli to win an individual medal in either the Olympics or the Paralympics.
Shalabi competes in the S1 classification, the severest level of disability.
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.
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 trains at the Sharabi Martial Arts club in Ramla, Israel.
