The Canadian Jewish News August 20, 2026
More than 2,000 Jewish teen athletes who travelled to Toronto for the JCC Maccabi games from Aug. 2-6, also discovered the history of Canadian Jewish sports at a special exhibit at the Schwartz/Reisman Centre.
The OJA All-Stars exhibition featured biographies and archival photos of six Canadian Jews who had a significant impact on national or international sports. Dara Solomon, executive director of the Toronto Holocaust Museum and the Ontario Jewish Archives (OJA), says the two institutions collaborated to bring this installation to life.
With large groups of students from across Canada, Europe, South America, the United States and Israel visiting every half hour during the four-day sporting event, Solomon says this was one of the Toronto Holocaust Museum’s largest undertakings.
“When we have school groups at the museum, there aren’t this many coming in at once. We have, on a big day, three school visits, each with 50 kids,” Solomon says, adding that they needed help from more than a dozen volunteers and staff for the OJA exhibition.
“This is like an all-hands-on deck event for the whole community, so we were very excited to participate and have the opportunity to be part of this meaningful program.”
The exhibition was designed to resemble a gymnasium locker room, Solomon says. Each locker was dedicated to one of the important figures and displayed baseball gloves, hockey jerseys, or other equipment and relevant artifacts. The lockers also described obstacles the athletes faced in their careers, whether based on gender, physical health, or antisemitism.
One athlete on display was Samuel Rothschild. The son of a synagogue leader, Rothschild became the first Jewish NHL player when he joined the Montreal Maroons in 1924 and helped the team win a Stanley Cup in 1926. He was later inducted into the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame.
The installation explains that Rothschild embodied the ideals of resilience and Jewish pride. Solomon says exposing students to these Jewish histories and values at an event like the Maccabi games is meaningful because “for some, this might be one of the biggest, most significant Jewish things they do.”
“It helps build character and a sense of Jewish identity when you have this really strong sense of belonging to something bigger than yourself,” says Solomon. “My husband, who’s American, participated in a number of Maccabi games as a young person and it remains such an important touchpoint for his Jewish identity.”
Other Jews featured in the exhibition: Lol Solman, who owned minor league baseball team the Toronto Maple Leafs and built their Maple Leaf Stadium in 1926; Teme Kernerman, an instructor of Israeli folk dance and founder of the Ontario Folk Dance Association; and Sammy Luftspring, a 1938 Canadian Welterweight Championship boxer who boycotted the 1936 Berlin Olympics out of solidarity for the Jewish community.
Pulling together all these stories was a challenge, says OJA archivist Faye Blum. Archives on Canadian Judaism have “gaps” when it comes to some areas of Jewish history – specifically Sephardic and Orthodox communities, as well as topics like sports.
“This athlete focus was difficult for us because we don’t have records to actually do a deep dive into anyone’s story,” Blum says.
At the end of the installation, students could take pins that represented the athletes’ ideals they connected with most. Volunteers then gave the students kits for addressing antisemitism in the context of sports. Solomon hopes these kits and stories will empower young athletes to advocate for themselves when they face discrimination.
Brooke Braverman was a volunteer who helped run the exhibition. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, she was unable to participate in the Maccabi games, so being a volunteer allowed her to finally share stories with other Jewish athletes.
One participating swimmer explained to Braverman that she was shomer Shabbat and received pushback when she told coaches she couldn’t compete on Saturdays. Braverman says it was common to hear students talk about experiencing antisemitism in sports as they reflected on the exhibition.
“Being a Jewish athlete and also being someone who is observant is very hard,” she says. “We hoped they could see themselves in these lights (in the exhibition) and would be able to home in on that and say, ‘Maybe I will be a future leader in the Jewish community like all these people.’”
Braverman says the kits were a strong way to end the exhibition. She encourages students who face antisemitism to be proud of their Jewish heritage, to stand their ground, and to “not let the other side win.”
“We have to make sure that we’re not going to leave,” Braverman says. “A lot of other athletes succeeded with that—of being proud of who they are—and these (new) athletes can continue to do that.”
