Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

First Jewish Winter Games held in more than 85 years kick off in Germany

Athletes wave the Israeli flag and are set to compete in skiing, figure skating and snowboarding

For the first time in more than 85 years, Jewish athletes are competing in Maccabi winter games — and they’re doing it in Germany.

The Makkabi Deutschland Winter Games kicked off Tuesday in Ruhpolding, in the Bavarian Alps. 

The last Jewish Winter Games ever held were in 1936 in Czechoslovakia, and before that, in Poland in 1933 — just a few short years before the Nazis invaded both countries and began annihilating Europe’s Jewish population.

More than 350 athletes from around the world are set to compete in alpine and cross country skiing, snowboarding, biathlon, figure skating, Bavarian curling and snow volleyball. 

The U.S. delegation announced plans to compete in all sports except snow volleyball. 

Kaitlynn Levine in Bavarian curling. Courtesy of Maccabi USA

Other events include an opening ceremony, a combination havdalah and pool party, a Kabbalat Shabbat and ending ceremony on Jan. 9. 

The events are being livestreamed on YouTube. 

The first two Maccabiah Games predate the modern Israeli state, having been held in what was then a British protectorate in 1932 and 1935. Until now, the only two dedicated winter games were the ones in Poland and Czechoslovakia. The regular games picked back up in 1950. Since 1953, the games have been held every four years, though COVID-19 led to a one-year delay, pushing them to 2022.

While primarily composed of sports traditionally found in the Summer Olympics, ice hockey has become a regular component of those games. In 2015, a gathering at the European Maccabi Games being held in Berlin broke the Guiness World Record for the largest Shabbat meal.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.