Here’s every Jewish athlete competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics

The 2024 Paris Olympics kick off July 26, 2024. And while Israel is facing its own unique pressure to compete under difficult circumstances, Jewish athletes from around the world will be expected to challenge stereotypes about their Jewish identities and could face criticism over their Zionist beliefs or affiliations. After all, Jewish and Israeli athletes have been subjected to boycotts and protests worldwide since Oct. 7, and there’s no greater global sports stage than the Olympic Games.

Setting politics aside, for those viewers at home whose rooting interests lie more with Jewish athletes than nation states, The CJN’s sports podcasters, Gabe Pulver and James Hirsh, who host Menschwarmers, have compiled a reasonably comprehensive list of every non-Israeli Jewish athlete competing at this year’s Summer Olympics. (For a full look at the 88-person Israeli delegation, Wikipedia has you covered.)

To fill out the list, Gabe and James spent weeks doing the kind of hard-nosed journalism that only sports podcasters can do. They waded through old Instagram posts to find menorahs. They googled around looking for anecdotes about bubbies and synagogues. They dug up years-old news articles referencing Jewish day schools or family histories.

And they discussed their findings on the latest episode of the Menschwarmers podcast. Hear their full conversation here, transcribed and edited down below.

Jessica Fox, canoeist

James: The first person I want to talk about is going to be a repeat medalist if she’s able to do it. And that is the great Jessica Fox. She is a French-born Australian, actually, was born in Marseille, which is very fitting—

Gabe Jessica Esther Fox, as a matter of fact.

James: Yeah, exactly. She already has four Olympic medals: she won a canoeing medal in Tokyo and three kayaking medals in London, Rio and Tokyo. She is one of the greatest individual paddlers of all time, there’s no doubt. She will be competing in 2024 in both canoe and kayak disciplines. Very fun watch—not a thing that I watch a ton of outside of the Olympics, but if you see kayaking or canoeing on TV, it’s very interesting.

Gabe: They build this rapids course that they can go down.

James: Yeah, they’re doing something for the first time this year called “kayak cross” at the Olympics—if you’re familiar with, in the Winter Olympics, it’s traditionally an X Games event, where they do ski cross or snowboard cross, which is four or five people going at the same time. So that’s going to be a real spectator sport. And going along with her is her sister, Noemie Fox.

Gabe: They’re also, interestingly enough, the daughter of one of the greatest paddlers of all time: their mother, Myriam Fox-Jerusalmi, who is French. She won, I think, nine world championship gold medals and one Olympic medal. So it’s a multi-generational. Interestingly, when you go on Jessica Fox’s Wikipedia, you can find her on the “List of select Jewish canoers”.

James: Wow. Maybe one day I’ll be on that list.

Gabe: You never know, you might be.

James: My canoeing has not been sport-certified, exactly.

Sarah Levy, rugby player

Gabe: I think we’ll stick with the non-traditionally Jewish sports and talk about one of the toughest MFers we found, which is American rugby sevens player Sarah Levy. Don’t know how much you know about traditional rugby, but it is a sport without breaks where large people smash into each other until one of them can get the ball to the other end.

James What’s different about rugby sevens?

Gabe: So rugby teams are normally 15 people aside. Rugby sevens is seven people aside, but on the same sized field. So it is way faster. More wide open. The hits are harder. The play is bigger. It’s quite exciting and really, really fast. What’s really interesting about Sarah Levy is rugby is her second sport. She played at the Maccabi Games for Team USA in soccer in 2012. She grew up in New York, but also lived in San Diego for a while, was a soccer star and then converted to rugby as she got older and made her way to the Olympic team. And Team USA, they’re not favourited to win—but they could always do really well on any large-scale rugby event.

James: Yeah, that seems like a pretty good chance for a medal, whether they get the gold or not. Women’s rugby sevens really captured people’s attention in Tokyo, as well.

Gabe: I also think it’s interesting that she’s not traditionally a rugby sevens player. She plays in the full-squad rugby. So she’s going to go a whole lot faster.

Nick Itkin, fencer

James: The next the next person I want to talk about is another American, fencer Nick Itkin. I want to shout out the U.S. fencing team: based on our assessment, there are at least six Jews on the American fencing team, which is insane.

Gabe: If you go back into our archives, you’ll find our interview where with with a notable Jewish fencer—

James: Yes, we talked to Eli Schenkel, who was on the fencing team for Canada in the Tokyo games.

Gabe: He discussed the Jewish history of fencing. It’s a pretty Jewish sport, which is odd, because we’re generally afraid of sharps, as a people. Doctors’ scalpels, we’re good with, but swords?

James: It seems like a lot of the fencers in the States are coming from a few different places. Nick is from Los Angeles. I know there are New York schools as well—some of which are, like what Eli told us, and I think this is true of some of the places in the States—they were founded by former Soviet Jews. My understanding is that Nick Itkin is a child or grandchild of Soviet Jews. So he is a foil fencer, and he was part of the U.S. team in Tokyo that won the bronze for team foil. But he has put together a really solid record on his own. He took silver in the individual foil in Milan in the 2023 world championships and has a really good shot. He’s definitely a good medal contender, both individually and with the whole team. And if any part of the U.S. fencing team wins medals, there are going to be some Jewish medals there—again, just given the fact that there are at least six Jews on the U.S. fencing team.

Jesse Grupper, climber

Gabe: I want to move onto a non-traditional sport that’s new to the Olympics. Rock climbing made its debut in Tokyo in 2021, and it looks to continue its popularity—speed climbing, trad climbing, sport climbing, those are the disciplines they have. And if you believe in nominative determinism, which I very much do, I want to bring your attention to a Californian Jew named Jesse Grupper, which is very, very close to “gripper”, which is which is someone who holds on to things—and Jesse has to hold onto artificial rocks for a living. I’m very much looking forward to Jesse performing. Doing his research on his Judaism, one of the first Google results I found was a congratulations to Jesse from his shul bulletin for winning a child climbing competition.

James: That’s how you know you made it.

Gabe: Now he’s going to the Olympics. So good luck to him. Watching that unfamiliar sport of climbing, it’s good TV. Seeing people make incredibly difficult things look easy is pretty darn cool.

James: Yeah, I agree. It was cool to watch last time. I think they need to do some work in the format in terms of making it more of a spectator sport; the speed climbing, I feel, just goes by too fast. It’s still in its infancy as an Olympic sport, but it is cool. The head-to-head element of it reads well on TV.

Gabe: Jesse is ranked third in the world currently from the last world championships in 2022. He won two gold medals in two different events in that tournament and he was the champion of the Pan Am Games last year. So that championship puts him in pretty good medal contending—but there are a lot of good climbers out of Poland, I’m hearing.

Amit Elor, wrestler

James: The last Olympian I wanted to talk about is American wrestler Amit Elor. As you would probably guess from the name, she is the child of Israeli parents, I believe Soviet refugees. Amit was the 2022 and 2023 world champion freestyle wrestler in the 72-kilogram discipline. Wrestling is one of the few sports that is divided by weight class, which makes sense.

Gabe: Every other sport is just divided by social class, am I right?

James: Ha. But interestingly enough, the Olympics only have 76- and 68-kilogram disciplines. So Amit made the decision to move down to the 68-kilogram and won the Olympic trials. So her two world championships, again, are at the 72-kilogram level. She’s having to wrestle at a lower weight, which can be difficult for people. Sometimes you have to change your weight. It can be a difficult adjustment. She has competed at 68 kilograms before; she won a junior world championship back in 2021. Wrestling, again, glad it’s back in the Olympics—

Gabe: It’s a classic Olympic sport, just two people who can push each other farther.

James: Absolutely. It’s so dumb that it was gotten rid of. But I think it would be really interesting to see how she does. And I’ll be interested to see whether there is focus on her status as an Israeli American and what that means.

Ada Korkhin, pistol shooter

Gabe: Traditionally, you don’t see Jewish athletes in the gun-related sports—as a group, we don’t like violence or guns. However, we know that a lot of Russian Jews and a lot of Israeli Jews are incredibly tough and not necessarily the people we want to be in a dark alley against when they have a gun. Which is why I want to bring us back to Brookline, Massachusetts, a very Jewish part of Boston. Ada Korkhin learned pistol shooting when she was, like, a tween for her Russian-Israeli father, Yakov.

James: Yeah, it’s really cool. The sport pistol is—it’s sort of a comically large pistol. It is made for target shooting, specifically for precision. It’s very cool how it looks—like a Dirty Harry–type gun, but even larger.

Gabe: Absolutely. I’m happy we get to see a Jewish person taking part in this this frankly badass sport.

Want more Jewish Olympics coverage? Hear Gabe and James speak with Canadian beach volleyballer Sam Schachter, one of two Jewish Canadians heading to Paris this year. For up-to-date coverage of these athletes and others, follow the Menschwarmers on Twitter.

A full list (as far as we know) of Diaspora Jewish athletes at the 2024 Paris Olympics