August 7 2026
Kol Hakavod, Team Long Beach!
Dear Friends,
I have just returned from attending the JCC Maccabi Games & Access in Toronto, Canada. The Games in Toronto brought together more than 2,000 Jewish teen athletes of diverse abilities from across the United States and around the world, including teams from as far away as Argentina, Hungary, and Israel. For over forty years, the Games have been an opportunity for Jewish teens to gather, strengthen their identity, and deepen their connection to peoplehood through Olympic-style sporting events.
It was an incredible experience and privilege to join 30 of our Team Long Beach athletes, ages 13–17, as well as Jewish Long Beach staff, coaches, volunteers, and families whose boundless energy and generosity of spirit make our participation in the Games possible.
We are proud of the teens who represented Team Long Beach this year for the spirit of friendship they maintained throughout their time in Toronto. Altogether, they brought home 10 medals: 2 Gold, 2 Silver, and 6 Bronze. Kol HaKavod!
While there is a sense of competition at the Games, there is also something much more: a sense of Jewish joy. The teens are doing something far more important than competing. They are experiencing what it means to belong.
They are meeting Jewish young people from communities across the country and around the world. They are building friendships, sharing traditions, cheering one another on, and discovering that their Jewish identity connects them to something much bigger than themselves.
This same spirit of connection was on display here at home earlier this week, when roughly 100 people joined us at the Alpert JCC for the “What’s Next for Peace?” panel discussion hosted by Beach Hillel and Sharaka. Sharaka’s work is integral to promoting normalization on a people-to-people level between Israel and the broader Middle East and North Africa through non-governmental collaboration. These conversations are essential and a powerful reminder that Jewish connection can bring together many perspectives within our community and beyond our immediate circles.
We live in a time when it has become remarkably easy to disconnect. We can retreat into our phones, our individual lives, our own communities, and our own concerns. Loneliness and isolation are increasingly part of the landscape of modern life.
Jewish life offers another path.
It reminds us that we are part of a people. That we have responsibilities to one another. That gathering together matters.
This is why Jewish Long Beach matters.
The Alpert JCC is more than a place where programs happen. It is a platform for human connection, catalyzed by Jewish wisdom. Whether it is a child at camp, a family at the J, a senior finding community, a teenager traveling to JCC Maccabi, or someone walking through our doors for the first time, our work is about creating opportunities for people to find one another and discover that they belong.
I look forward to seeing you soon at the J.
Shabbat Shalom,
Erik Ludwig, PhD
Chief Executive Officer