Emory Brings Home Torah Bowl Title

As a senior at Emory University preparing for graduation, Jackson Gardner is waist-deep in his studies. He is weeks away from completing his interdisciplinary major in neuroscience and behavioral biology, effectively an amalgam of anthropology, biology, and psychology.

Ever since he matriculated at Emory several years back, he’s maintained a laser-sharp focus on pursuing medical school, hence, the hefty load of life sciences courses. But along the way, there was one course he took as a sophomore, a Talmud class taught by Rabbi Michael Berger, of Toco Hills, that really piqued his interest in the vastly different field of Judaic/Torah studies. Two years later, thanks to the burgeoning popularity of Torah Bowl competition across American college campuses, he’s been able to revisit that interest.

This past winter, Gardner, along with several other Emory students, went up to the Hillel National Torah Bowl in Maryland. After several days of networking with other Jewish students and soaking up an endless amount of Torah knowledge, the Emory senior jumped at the opportunity to participate in an early spring Torah Bowl Tournament at the University of Central Florida, officially dubbed the first annual Southeast Intercollegiate Torah Bowl Tournament.

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The brainchild of a University of Florida student named Dasi Vann, the tournament was largely orchestrated by the renowned organization known as Yavneh on Campus that galvanized Jewish students from schools across Georgia and Florida for a massive weekend retreat comprised of not just Judaic history trivia competition but also Shabbat services and meals.

Apparently, Gardner’s inaugural Torah Bowl experience at College Park, Md., was worthwhile as he and his good friends, Andrew Shulman and Ari Dworkin, were crowned champs in the UCF-based tournament that involved dozens of teams throughout the Southeast, including two others from Atlanta, answering questions about a wide swath of Jewish and Torah-related topics, including Chumash [five books of Moses], Tanakh [the whole corpus of Torah, the prophets, and the Writings], Jewish history, Jewish thought, Jewish law, and Jewish life and customs.

“We’ve spent tons of time together, especially on Shabbat so we already knew each other’s strengths going into the competition which was great since we could really support one another in the areas that we needed help in,” Gardner told the Atlanta Jewish Times several days after his trio knocked off the Florida Atlantic University team for the Torah Bowl title. “Neither of them [Shulman and Dworkin] had gone to the previous Torah Bowl but they both picked it up without a problem and the knowledge they brought really helped our team succeed and win the championship.”

Gardner and his friends weren’t the only team representing Atlanta. There was another Emory team, the duo of Joseph Rosenbaum and Leah Bader, as well as the trio of Tal Najman, Lielle Porat, and Jonathan Nooriel, the latter two of whom hail from Georgia State University.

Undoubtedly, the growing appeal of Judaic studies, and, in effect, the Torah Bowl tournaments, to undergrads in the Metro Atlanta area can largely be attributed to the tireless efforts of Rabbi Ben Atwood, who serves as the Southeast coordinator for Yavneh and recently finished his rabbinical studies at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary this past December.

A native of Teaneck, N.J., Rabbi Atwood moved to Toco Hills a couple summers ago so that his wife, Rachel, could attend Emory University School of Law, and has since spearheaded the OU-JLIC Greater Atlanta Program that works in conjunction with the local campus Hillels to provide Beit Midrash learning, Shabbat programming, and social events for Atlanta’s growing population of college-aged students who practice Orthodox, Conservative, or non-denominational Judaism.

“When I was in undergrad, I used to travel to other campuses [NYU, Columbia, UMD, Brandeis, etc.] almost every Shabbat to visit friends, and I was awestruck by the incredible Jewish communities on campus,” remarked Atwood, who served as one of the judges at the national Torah Bowl at UCF last month. “I was amazed at how invested college students could be in the success of their communities and how much time and effort they volunteered to assure their communities would thrive. There were totally student-run prayer services, social events, holiday programming, Jewish learning programming. I watched as my friends learned to find what parts of religious Judaism most connected with them and fully immersed themselves into that activity.”

As the Torah Bowl tournaments have proven to be a great success in facilitating networking opportunities for Jewish undergrad students across the Southeast—essentially the underlying purpose of Yavneh on Campus, along with that of empowering undergrad students to take the initiative to start their own programs—the plan is for them to be held on an annual basis, not just at UCF but at more schools throughout the country.