Memglobal logo
Memglobal logo
    Print this page
    ,

    March Madness Food and Watch Party 

    By Rabbi Shari Shamah, Jewish Life Specialist

    INTRODUCTION:

    The 2026 NCAA Tournament starts on Sunday March 15th, 2026, with the selection. The first four games start on Tuesday, March 17th. The Tournament continues until the NCAA championship game on April 6th in Indianapolis.  Watching parts of the tournament together is a great way to look at the contributions of Jews in sports, the current network of Jews coaching and playing basketball, and how basketball became game that Jews played.  

    Some games are less exciting than others, and you don’t know that until they’re played. And some people come for the company and don’t have connections to the teams so might not be as into team brackets. This program combines bracketology with both NCAA basketball and Jewish foods brackets and fun.

    MATERIALS:

    • March Madness printable bracket 
    • Pens/pencils 
    • Jewish food bracket  
    • Jewish food snacks (make or buy some from the top Jewish food list) 
    • Television/streaming for games 
    • Jewish food prize (ie, Trader Joe’s Choc Babka, Halvah, Challah…) 

    PROGRAM OUTLINE (2-3 hours):

    • [part one] Setting up your brackets 
    • [part two] Snacking/watching games/voting on food brackets 
    • [part three] Final four food voting and announcing of winners 

    Setting up Brackets (15 minutes) 

    • While welcoming guests, they should be handed 2 different blank brackets. The first is to fill in (or update) for NCAA basketball games. The 2nd is the Jewish food bracket that they need to fill in, along with an explanation of how it works. 

    How food voting works: 

    • Before the program, go through this list and identify your top 32 Jewish foods. Have these written on a sheet of paper so that people can rank their choices and fill in their brackets from among these foods they think will make it to the finals. 
    • Once brackets are filled in, you need to have people ‘claim’ a food to argue for. This will depend on number of attendees. Ie, if you have 8 people, they each need to claim 4, 16 people they each need to claim 2. During commercials and slow points, you’ll invite people up to play. Which means they get to argue for their food for 15 seconds against their opponent.  
    • Here’s an example – Challah vs Mandelbrot 
      • Challah – It’s the perfect food; it can be sweet or savory. It gets eaten every Shabbat. It comes in 2’s. It can be eaten alone or made into a sandwich. 
      • Mandelbrot – It can have choc chips or almonds. It’s snack size so you can eat more than 1 piece. There are tons of different family recipes floating around. It can be made for Passover and the rest of the year. 
      • Once they are, take a vote and advance the winner to the next round. Play continues until you have the winner. 

    Snacking/Games/Food competition (1-1.5 hrs) 

    • This timing is flexible based on the quality of the basketball games, and how enthusiastic your food challenges get. Intersperse food challenges during the game when things get quiet. Serve Jewish snacks and allow people to hang out. Commercial breaks, half-time, and timeouts work perfectly. 
    • Infuse Jewish Basketball knowledge. Using links below, identify 10 different Jews in Basketball facts that you can interject throughout the evening.  

    Final four food voting and announcing of winners (15 mins) 

    • Once you have a favorite food, announce the winner and give them their food trophy prize. 
    • Depending on where in March Madness this event is timewise, you can also announce an NCCA bracket winner and give them a prize. 

    Jewish Basketball Resources:

    Print this page