The Los Angeles City Council Friday honored seven athletes as part of a commemoration for Jewish American Heritage Month 2026.
City Council members Bob Blumenfield and Katy Yaroslavsky, who are Jewish, led a ceremony at City Hall during the City Council meeting Friday morning. The two honored Abraham Cohen, Eli Marmur, Benny Binstock, Pini Ben-Zaken, Chaim Gonshore, Moshe Hoftman and Eric Braeden — all members of the Maccabee Los Angeles Soccer Club.
“When we started this — now an annual event — a decade ago, we wanted to bring together diverse Jewish communities throughout the area,” Blumenfield said. “We wanted to highlight different themes to help highlight the impact Jewish people have had in our local and our national culture.”
Blumenfield explained this year’s marquee celebration is called “Playing It Forward, Championing Jewish Values through Sport.” The councilman noted the group unveiled an art exhibit and public program at City Hall’s gallery, located on the third floor, that celebrates the enduring contributions of Jewish athletes, institutions and change makers who shaped sports in Los Angeles and in other areas.
Photos feature Lillian Copeland, who won a gold medal in the 1932 L.A. Olympics, as well as local community leaders such as Danny Goldberg, head of the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, among others.
Yaroslavsky thanked and recognized this year’s honorees, adding “We’re lucky to have quite a few members of the Jewish sports community with us. Your discipline, sports-man and woman-ship, and competitive spirits are inspirations to all of us.”
Braeden, founder of the soccer club, explained the group consisted of Holocaust survivors and Israeli expatriates, and served as a recreational Sunday soccer team that began playing competitively in 1971.
The team notably reached the US Open Cup final seven times in its 11-year history, becoming one of only two teams to win the competition five times. Members later went on to win the Triple Crown twice in 1977 and 1978, by winning the Greater Los Angeles Soccer League, California State Cup and the US Open Cup.
Braeden spoke about growing up in Nazi Germany in 1941, and under the bombs of that dreadful ware. I grew up in postwar Germany, but left in 1959 for America at the age of 18.
“I began to play for the Maccabees, and I was determined to prove that Germans are not genetically predisposed to antisemitism because they weren’t until the Nazis came along,” Braeden said.
“I played for the team with pride,” Braeden added.
He noted that his journey with the team gave the opportunity to meet different people.
“We are all the same. We are all God’s creations. There are no differences in our aspirations, none. We are truly all the same. We need to get to know each other. Human contact is so vitally important to overcome stupid prejudices,” Braeden said.