Recent Rosemount High School graduate Isla George won eight medals and was named female MVP at the 25th Maccabiah Games in Israel last month. She was one of three Minnesota athletes who took part in the games – one of which was her Riptide Swim Club teammate Isabel Rosenberg, a recent graduate of Eastview High School in Apple Valley.
This year’s games were scheduled for 2025, but were postponed by the Maccabi World Union due to the skirmish between Israel and Iran last summer.
“We did the JCC Maccabi Games in Florida and Michigan, and we had a lot of fun there,” Rosenberg said. “Then we heard about Maccabi USA and the Maccabiah in Israel, and competing on an international level, and that sounded really fun to us. So we signed up.”
The two south metro swimmers combined for 14 medals – Rosenberg won six of them – and were joined in Israel by U-17 volleyball player Naomi Mann.
St. Paul’s Naomi Mann (far right, No. 5 in red) after a match in the U-17 Maccabiah Games volleyball tournament. (Courtesy Mann family)
“It was, honestly, a life-changing experience,” said Mann, a junior at St. Paul Academy who is representing Minnesota at the JCC Maccabi Games in Kansas City. “Just getting to be in Israel, surrounded by so many Jewish people, was the coolest, most meaningful experience I’ve ever gotten to have in my life. Coming back, I feel so much more connected to my Judaism and Israel.”
Due to the one-year delay, there were fewer teams than originally planned for in the volleyball tournament. Maccabi USA added a second USA team to the U-17 group, which split the American talent pool.
“They filled up the other team before filling up my team, and we were missing a bunch of positions,” she said. “Then we had someone who got injured. The volleyball part was a little bit challenging, but that didn’t matter to me as much as I thought it was going to. I was just happy to be there and get the experience.”
Isla George and Isabel Rosenberg with their medal haul at the Maccabiah Games (Courtesy Isabel Rosenberg).
After the two weeks of competition was the Israel Connect program, where the open and junior level athletes get to see Israel beyond the pool, arena, and field. The Israel Connect program had taken place before the games in past iterations, in part acting as a pre-games training camp. When the games were changed to this summer, it was a week earlier than it would have been in 2025, which necessitated the shift to a post-games experience.
“It was incredibly meaningful for all of our athletes to be there in this moment in time, and in the context of the last few years for Israel and the Jewish people,” said Marshall Einhorn, the CEO of Maccabi USA. “And certainly meaningful for Israel and Israelis to have us be there for those same reasons.”
Einhorn said that when tensions ratcheted up between Israel, the U.S., and Iran in February, there was some trepidation about going forward with the games – but they went on without incident.
“As soon as I got there, I felt very safe,” Mann said. “I was doing so many fun things there wasn’t anything to think about.”
Einhorn said about 75 percent of the 2025 U.S. delegation took part in the rescheduled event, and some sports or age groups were canceled.
“Unlike a Birthright group where you can rely on 40 people to form a bus. you obviously need people to compete against,” he said. “In ice hockey, for example, there were a few countries who weren’t able to to attend the games due to travel restrictions in their you from their governments to the region, and one of those being Canada…so ice hockey was a sport that didn’t end up taking place for these games, which meant a number of our teams and a number of the athletes on those teams or all the athletes on those teams could no longer participate.”