Like Joshua, to Battle

As the crack team from El Camino Real High School competes this weekend at the U.S. Academic Decathlon, a West Hills synagogue is prepping six youngsters on Genesis, Psalms and other texts in hopes of winning honors for the ninth straight year at the National Bible Contest.

Shomrei Torah Synagogue’s entries have taken 11 of 16 possible national titles since 1990 in the competition in New York City sponsored by World Zionist Organization.

The U.S. finals will be May 10, and top winners go on to Israel for the international contest.

Remarkably, the West Hills competitors--ages 12 through 17--are not Jewish day school students, but boys and girls drawn from the weekly Bible study class taught for more than three decades by Avrum Schwartz.

“They must have some rabbi at that shul [synagogue] in California,” remarked an astonished man in the New York audience who was listening to the winners and runners-up being announced two years ago.

He was overheard by a Canoga Park woman whose son, Gabriel, was the 1996 national champion. “The rabbi doesn’t coach them; it’s our cantor!” said Sherry Schwartz, no relation to the cantor/coach.

Indeed, Senior Rabbi Elijah Schochet complimented the coach’s ability, but said the main credit goes to the boys and girls themselves.

“At a time when glorification of the body and sports is seen as so important, it is comforting to find kids who exercise their minds,” Schochet said. “This is intellectual athleticism of the first order--something they have in common with the El Camino Real students.”

The El Camino Real team from Woodland Hills--the state Academic Decathlon champs for a record third straight year--began competing Friday in Providence, R.I., for the national title.

Once there was an overlap between the secular decathlon team and the synagogue’s Bible scholars. Dawn Robinson, who placed second in the 1995 National Bible Contest, was also on the El Camino Real team one year. And two current Shomrei Torah competitors said this week they hope someday to make the El Camino team as well.

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Just as high school teams take “mascots” or lucky charms with them to the national decathlon, the six synagogue youths have a small stuffed leopard named “Joshie,” named after the biblical figure Joshua.

There was a brief moment of panic this week when team members remembered that Tova Weintraub had Joshie and the team would have to reclaim it from her. Tova would have been the seventh student on the synagogue team, but she won’t be able to go to New York.

“Sometimes Joshie baby suddenly flies through the air while we’re studying,” said Sarra Schwartz, 14, the sister of Gabriel, 16, who returned to the team this year.

Another prank to lighten up the sessions has been “to hide his [the coach’s] keys,” said Erica Rood, who is competing for the third year.

During a study session Wednesday afternoon on the story of Joseph and his brothers in Genesis, the cantor cautioned Michael Nagel and others to give precise replies.

“You have to be exact, you can’t generalize,” he said. And noticing that no one had pencil and paper, he commented gently: “If I have to tell you to take notes, we’re in real trouble.”

Schwartz said that his synagogue, affiliated with the Conservative wing of Judaism, is one of the few Los Angeles area congregations to field teams in the national and international contests. But even the West Hills synagogue competes only in the English-language divisions--one for age 11 to 13 and the other for those 14 to 17. The Hebrew language contests are for full-time students at Jewish day schools.

The level of knowledge expected, however, is tougher than is needed for such Sunday school questions as what animal tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden or on what mountain did Moses receive the Ten Commandments.

For this year’s contest, the younger group can be asked anything from 40 of Genesis’ 50 chapters, most of Joshua and selected Psalms. The older group has to know at least that much in those books plus certain chapters in Amos and Zechariah, and all of the short book of Jonah.

The Bible students qualify for the national contest by scoring 85% correct on the regional contest. This year marked only the second time that Shomrei Torah--or its pre-merger predecessor, Congregation Beth Kodesh--has qualified seven students since the cantor began coaching competitors in 1968.

The local tests have both multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank questions. The national contest, which draws nearly 200 competitors, offers fewer multiple-choice among its 200 questions. In the international finals, the testing is oral rather than written.

Elizabeth Delshad finished 11th overall at the international event in Israel in 1995--the highest ranking ever achieved by a Shomrei Torah youth.

Roberta “Bert” Turitz, whose 13-year-old Michelle is going to New York this year, said the team members like the playful competitive nature of their cantor-coach. The wiry, 5-foot-10 Schwartz, who describes himself as 60 years old going on 12, half-jokingly said, “I have yet to lose in one-on-one basketball to a bar mitzvah candidate,” adding that they start getting too tall after age 13.

But more than the shared pizzas and movie treks with the cantor, Bert Turitz said, the young biblical students are getting a benefit beyond memorization skills from the experience.

“This is not a chore--like studying the periodic tables,” she said. “The Bible is a very good piece of literature at the very least.”

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Practice Questions

Here are sample practice test questions in the English-language categories of the National Bible Contest sponsored by the World Zionist Organization. The U.S. finals will be held May 10 in New York City. The contest uses the 1988 translation of the Bible, Tanakh in Hebrew, by the Jewish Publication Society.

Who is speaking to whom?

1. “Where are you?

2. “I will not take a thread or shoelace . . . “

3. “ . . . let the lad go up with his brothers.”

Fill in the blanks:

4. “They sell the righteous for -------------- and the needy for a ---------- of ------------.”

5. According to the Prophet Zechariah, Jerusalem will be called the city of ----------------.

6. “Happy is the man that has not walked in the ------------ of the --------------, nor ------------ in the way of the ----------------, nor ------------------ in the seat of the ---------------- .”

Answers: 1. The Lord to Adam and Eve. 2. Abraham to the King of Sodom. 3. Judah to Joseph. 4. silver, pair, shoes. 5. truth. 6. counsel, wicked, stood, sinners, sat, scoffers.