Zack Tanenbaum is a three-time Kansas state wrestling champion. He hopes to return from the 19th Maccabiah Games and announce he’s a Maccabiah champion as well.

More specifically, Tanenbaum would like to be a two-time Maccabiah champion. He is competing in Greco-Roman wrestling on Sunday, July 21, and freestyle wrestling on Monday, July 22. Both competitions will be held in Ashdod. The opening ceremonies are slated to be held tonight, Thursday, July 18, at Teddy Kollek Stadium in Jerusalem.

The biggest Jewish sports event of all time features 9,000 athletes from 70 different countries who will participate in one of 42 different sports. The competition lasts 11 days and takes place in venues all over Israel. Closing ceremonies will be held in Jerusalem on Aug. 30.

The principal mission of the Maccabiah is to facilitate a worldwide gathering of young Jewish athletes in Israel, staging the highest possible levels of sports competitions and strengthening their connection to the State of Israel and the Jewish people. In an interview before he left for Israel last week, Tanenbaum said he was very much looking forward to competing in this event.

“I think the biggest reason why I wanted to go to the Maccabiah is for the international competition,” said Tanenbaum, a 2011 graduate of Blue Valley North who won state wrestling championships as a sophomore, junior and senior. He was the second-place finisher as a freshman.

Not only is he looking forward to the “highly competitive tournament,” but also the fact that this unique competition is strictly for Jewish people.

“Where else can you wrestle other people from all the way around the world in a really highly competitive tournament … and be with other Jewish athletes like yourself,” he said adding that because they are all Jewish he and his competitors will have more in common than simply the sport itself.

“I think that’s pretty cool,” said the son of Kelly Jackson and Rob Tanenbaum. The family belongs to Congregation Ohev Sholom.

In fact Tanenbaum isn’t the first member of his family to compete in the Maccabiah in Israel. Four years ago his older brother Jake competed in the exact same events and earned two gold medals.

Zack Tanenbaum, who wants to be a physician when his competitive wrestling days are over, will be a junior at Brown University in Providence, R.I., this fall studying health and human biology. Another reason he said wanted to earn a spot on the U.S. team was because the event is in Israel.

“I can travel around and I can identify more with my Jewish identity and I can also gain a lot of information about Israeli culture and life,” he said before the trip.

In fact this is his third trip to Israel, one of which was a Birthright trip.

“Birthright was amazing, it’s awesome,” he said.

Team USA arrived in Israel a week in advance of the games to participate in the ISRAEL CONNECT cultural and educational program that is unique to Maccabi USA. The IC program provides these athletes with the opportunity to tour the historic and religious sites of Israel as members of Team USA so they can bond with each other, their culture and heritage and experience the magic and beauty of Israel.

“We take athletes that happen to be Jewish, to compete in the Maccabiah Games,” said Jeff Bukantz, general chairman of 19th Maccabiah USA Organizing Committee. “But we return home with Jewish athletes who have a renewed sense of pride in their Judaism and increased support for the State of Israel.”

By early this week Team USA had already traveled to many places, including the Kotel, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and Masada. Many more things are on the agenda before the trip is over including a visit to Yad Vashem.

Tanenbaum is one of the 1,140 athletes and coaches representing the United States, the largest traveling delegation ever to travel from the USA to compete in an International Olympic Committee-sanctioned event. An additional group of more than 300 friends and family are in Israel with Maccabi USA to cheer on the team, including some of Tanenbaum’s relatives. Two other athletes from Kansas were selected for Team USA — Jacob Biller, a junior boys baseball player from Manhattan, Kan., and Adam Beren, a master’s tennis player from Wichita.

The Maccabiah, often called “the Jewish Olympics, takes place every four years in Israel. It is the third largest international sporting event in the world, after the Summer Olympics and the Pan Am Games.

Within the Maccabiah there are four separate competitions that take place — open, junior, masters and paralympics. Junior games are open to any qualifying athlete aged 15-18. Masters are divided into a number of different age categories mostly to accommodate older competitors and is open to ages 16-23.

Tanenbaum will compete in open wrestling. He qualified for the team at the trials held in Ohio in May and will wrestle at 66 kilograms, which is around 145 pounds. The first time he wrestled at that weight was at the trials.

“I usually wrestle lighter,” he said, noting that as a member of the Brown varsity wrestling team this year he often wrestled at 141.

He’s been “preparing and training hard” for the event, he said.

“I’ve been practicing a lot with some other good college wrestlers, including Symon Syton from Fort Hayes State. I’ve also been training with some of the better high school wrestlers in Kansas City,” Tanenbaum said.

The wrestling tournament itself is only two days. In addition to traveling around the country, the team will find time to fit in two-a-day training sessions.

Here in the United States Tanenbaum normally competes in freestyle wrestling. But international competitions include both freestyle and Greco-Roman styles.

“They are kind of similar but the rules and the scoring are a little bit different,” he explained.

The 10th Maccabiah Games

This photo, published in The Chronicle’s pictorial review of the year 5737, shows Linda Kaufman and Steve Greenberg at one of their training sessions prior to heading to Israel for the Maccabiah Games in 1977.

Over the years the Kansas City area has had several athletes compete in the Maccabiah Games in Israel. Two of those athletes from the area participated in the 10th Maccabiah Games, which were held in July 1977. The Chronicle covered their experiences extensively.

Linda Gollub, who was Linda Kaufman at the time, was a 19-year-old runner who attended the University of Missouri on a track scholarship. She won bronze medals in the 400 and 1600-meter relays on the U.S. team and also finished fourth in three individual races — 100, 200 and 400 meters.

Steve Greenberg was 23 at the time and won the gold medal in the pole vault, setting a new record for the event. He was a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, which he also attended on an athletic scholarship.