The following is Jared Noyman’s firsthand account of his experience in Israel as a member of the U.S. Maccabiah Men’s Gymnastics Team. Jared received support for his journey through the Simon Family Passport to Israel Fund, administered by Tidewater Jewish Foundation. We are honored to share his story in his own words, as he submitted it, without editorial changes by TJF.
In November 2024, I tried out for the 2025 U.S. Maccabiah Men’s Gymnastics team. When I received an email a few months later confirming my selection, I was ecstatic. Eager to compete, I trained relentlessly, pushing past the conclusion of my NCAA season and into the early months of summer. Unfortunately, my anticipation was temporarily put on hold when the Games were postponed to the following year. This journey has been a long time in the making and I am thrilled to say the wait was worth it. The Maccabiah Games were a resounding success, and my time in Israel became a more impactful experience than I ever could have imagined.
We arrived in Israel a week before the games to train at Israel’s national training center, the Wingate Institute. During this time I had the chance to explore my family’s deep roots in the country. My aunt Kenley and uncle Ran were also in Israel to watch my cousins compete for team USA in Soccer. Ran, who is my father’s youngest brother, gave us a tour of Hadera, a town an hour north of Tel Aviv where my extended family is from.
Our first stop was a large statue and memorial centered in a roundabout. The statue, which was a beautiful shade of teal, depicted a woman sitting down surrounded by a well maintained garden of flowers and stones. As we walked closer, there appeared a plaque dedicated “In loving memory of our dear mother Regina Neuman 1912-2002.” Regina Neuman was my great-grandmother, and a very well respected woman in Hadera.
Although Regina had died before I was born, seeing her statue felt like meeting her for the first time and gave me an immense feeling of family pride. Despite being my first visit, I already felt deeply connected to Hadera. As we continued, my uncle pointed out where he lived as a young kid. It was a three story apartment building behind a row of storefronts. Next to it was a large highrise where my great-grandmother’s house once stood.
We eventually came to the elementary school that my grandmother Batya attended and the synagogue where my father and his brothers were bar mitzvahed. Right down the street was where my great aunt once lived–although her house was now replaced by two modern looking homes. My uncle recounted fond memories of spending summers there as a kid. It was surreal finally seeing in person a place that holds so much of my family’s history. As it turned out, this would not be my last time in Hadera during my three weeks in Israel.
After a week of training, settling in, and enjoying the beaches of Tel Aviv, it was time to compete. Going into the competition, I felt confident and more than ready, having practiced and visualized my routines hundreds of times. I woke up before the sun had risen, grabbed a quick breakfast and headed to Pais Arena in Jerusalem with my team. The bus ride up was quiet; everyone was taking their last hour to rest and focus before it was go time.
We arrived at the venue and began to stretch and warm up. After the warm-up concluded, we marched out and headed to our first event: the rings. I do not compete in rings so I took the opportunity to cheer on my teammates Arun and Noam, who both delivered incredible routines. With momentum on our side we rotated to the vault, which was my first event. I had not trained vault for three years leading up to the games, but decided to bring it back a few weeks before. I am immensely glad that I did. I performed two beautiful vaults, the second one with a stuck landing.
We rotated through the events hitting routine after routine. A highlight of my competition was horizontal bar, where I performed one of the best routines of my career, starting with a high flying piked Jaeger, and finishing with a stuck back double layout with a full twist.
Our final event was the pommel horse–my best apparatus, but notoriously unforgiving. One faulty hand placement, or wrong lean of the shoulders and you are off the horse and on the ground. I was up last, and after watching my teammates nail their routines, the pressure was on. I saluted the judges, took a few deep breaths, and jumped onto the horse. Moving with confidence, I executed each skill exactly as I had in training. My most difficult and precarious skill is a Busnari–a circle up through the handstand, pirouetting twice, and circling back down into flairs. I executed it perfectly, which set the tone for the rest of the set. I flew back up through the handstand and into my dismount, finishing the competition with an exclamation mark.
I am proud to say that the Maccabiah games was one of the best competitions of my career. I came away with five medals–a gold medal on horizontal bar and silver medals in vault, parallel bars, pommel horse, and the team competition.
After the competition, the team was invited to Shabbat dinner by my coach’s friend Oz and his family. Oz picked us up from the hotel and drove us to his parents’ house. About an hour into the drive I began recognizing the surroundings–we were in Hadera. In fact, Oz’s family lived right across the street from the elementary school and synagog I had visited just a few days prior. This was a great sign for the night to come. Oz’s family treated us as their own. We were greeted with hugs, copious amounts of Israeli wine, and the most elaborate home-made feast I had ever seen. We stayed up late into the night celebrating a great competition earlier that day. Our time at Oz’s was full of laughter, memorable conversations, amazing food and a few too many drinks–after which we played ping pong, and foosball tournaments. Looking back, our Shabbat dinner with Oz and his family was one of the highlights of my trip.
With the competition behind us, we had free time on our hands. We spent a few days exploring Tel Aviv, the Carmel Shuk, and enjoying the city’s night life. One morning, the team rented out a boat and invited the Israeli National team to join us. Hanging out with the very athletes we had competed against days earlier was a powerful testament to the tight-knit community that gymnastics fosters. We spent the day making new friends, swimming in the Mediterranean, and doing flips off the side of the boat.
Over my final days in Tel Aviv, I met up with three of my father’s cousins and their children, whom I had never met before. It isn't every day you get to connect with an entirely new branch of your family tree, and their warmth made Israel truly feel like a home away from home.
Beyond family and gymnastics, our delegation took time to connect with the profound history, beauty, and resilience of the country. We traveled to the Dead Sea and Masada, walked the ancient stone streets of Jerusalem's Old City, and paid our respects at Yad Vashem. In a deeply moving experience, we also visited the Nova festival site and October 7th memorial, bearing witness to a modern tragedy and the enduring strength of the Israeli people.
We concluded our trip at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s amphitheater for a b’nai mitzvah ceremony. Surrounded by athletes and coaches from the USA delegation, we looked out over the Dead Sea and the red mountains as the sun set over the landscape. The Maccabiah Rabbi led a wonderful ceremony, followed by joyful singing, dancing, and "Mazal Tov!" all around. It was a beautiful, spiritual way to cap off an unforgettable journey. Israel will forever hold a special place in my heart, and I hope to return in the coming years to relive these memories, visit my new friends and family, and continue connecting with my Israeli and Jewish heritage.
- Jared Noyman