Jed Margolis, President, International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
Jed Margolis enjoyed a lengthy and honored career fostering Jewish Identity through athletics for more than 40+ years professionally in JCCs and Maccabi USA, where he served as Executive Director for 17 years, retiring in 2017. Under his tenure record numbers of Americans participated in Maccabi competitions in Australia, South American, Europe and Israel. While at the St. Louis JCC, he founded the St. Louis Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, brought the JCC Maccabi Games to the community, and opened the Marilyn Fox JCC Building which he directed. The National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame awarded him the Dick Steinberg “Good Guy” Award, and the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame recognized him with its Pillar of Achievement Award in 2013.
A native of Cleveland Heights Ohio, Margolis was honored by his high school with their Distinguished Alumni Award. In 1981 he was the recipient of JCCA’s Arthur Brodkin Award for outstanding dedication and service to the JCC field where he worked for 27 years.
He follows in the footsteps of his father Henry, who was Director of the Bureau of Jewish Education, and led many teen trips to Israel in educational programs. Margolis remains involved in Maccabi USA, Maccabi World Union and the Global Jewry Advisory Board, as well as IJSHOF serving as President from 2021. For MWU, he founded and co-chairs the CEO Forum which lends support to Maccabi Executive Directors around the world.
Margolis was a basketball standout at Cleveland Heights High School, and earned seven varsity letters at Oberlin College (basketball-4, soccer-1, track-1, golf-1), before playing in the 1973 Maccabiah Games winning a silver medal in Open Basketball, followed by a gold medal in Masters Basketball. He volunteered as part of the management teams that took hundreds of athletes to Israel, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires.
“I believe in the work of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and our work to educate, promote and support Jewish athletes. We truly inspire the next generation to excel in sports. While we are known as the “People of the Book” we are also the “People of the Story”. There are many inspiring true tales of the bravery and excellence of Jewish athletes as evidenced by the hundreds of world class athletes, world record holders and game changers who have impacted the world of athletics. We have an important role to play, also, in combating antisemitism.”
