This past Sunday, March 2nd, was the culmination of the robotic's team's work. As described in an earlier article here, the team had originally prepared for a qualifying event in January that was turned into a scrimmage. In the month between that scrimmage round and the  new qualifying competition this past Sunday, the team worked hard to enhance the robot's ability to accomplish all of its tasks.

At the scrimmage, we defied Murphy's law. Other teams entered the scrimmage with good-looking, well performing robots that could seemingly win every round, while our robot had encountered last minute troubles. Our initial strategy to accomplish the goals of the competition depended on an arm with three joints that could scoop up blocks efficiently, dump blocks in the boxes on pendulums, and hang from a bar in the middle of the field. In order to do that, we put three motors connected with gears at the base of the arm, to give it sufficient power to pull itself up onto the bar. However, the first and second joints weren't strong enough to lift their parts of the arm, so we had to remove them. This left us with a smaller arm powered by three motors, giving it a tremendous amount of power, but making it difficult to control. Thus, it became essentially useless. At the scrimmage, we were nonetheless able to take our poorly performing robot and outperform other robots, especially because of its ability to raise a flag, another task that was part of the competition. As mentioned in the previous article, by the time the competition was called, we were doing fairly well. But the postponement of the Qualifying Round gave us the opportunity to fix our robot and we used the time wisely.

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On Wednesday, the MTA Model Congress team traveled to the Young Israel of Woodmere to face off in the annual Yeshiva League Model Congress Competition. MTA made a huge splash! For the past two years we have not only won 1st place as a team, but we have also outdone every other school by a large margin. 

This year, we absolutely dominated the competition, winning awards in 10 out of 12 committees. 7 MTA students won the "Best Delegate" award and 3 won honorable mentions. Never before in Model Congress history has this kind of thing occurred. 

Led by Joey Goffstein ('14), Eliyahu Spivack ('14) and myself, the team was able to take the captains' advice and use it to bring home the win. We instructed the members of our team on the techniques used in Model Congress and we explained how to win. 

We look forward to next year, when the team will do even better, lead by Yisrael Friedenberg ('15) and Larry Likhtenstein ('15). Congratulations to the following team members for winning awards: Ben Tzion Zuckier ('17), Yehuda Goldberg ('17), Noam Josse ('17), Yisrael Friedenberg ('15), Larry Likhtenstein ('15), Joey Goffstein ('14), Shai Cohen ('14), Daniel Jaroslawicz ('14), Sam Reichman ('14) and Shlomo Fried ('14). 

I am very proud of the team's success and I hope to see even greater things next year. 

Mazel tov to Rabbi Danto's shiur on their siyum of the second perek of Maseches Ta'anis this week

They started out their celebration with an enjoyable trip to the batting cages. Afterwards, they went to Yosef Wildes' home where they had their seudah. The food was delicious!

Yosef's father, Rabbi Mark Wildes, then spoke about the amazing work he does through his kiruv organization, Manhattan Jewish Experience. It was a truly inspirational speech and the whole event was appreciated and enjoyed by all.

Mazel tov to the entire shiur!

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This past week, the visiting Israeli students from Yeshivat Mekor Chaim came to Morah Haibi's Ulpan classes. The Israelis allowed us to practice our Hebrew with peers whom we could connect with. The conversations were relaxed and the Israelis spoke to us as if we were fluent in Hebrew. The Israelis refused to translate into English and this helped the students practice their Hebrew and work out, in Hebrew, the meaning of words that they didn't understand. The Israelis also refused to translate from English to Hebrew so the students were forced to find new ways to get the message across. They asked us about our hobbies and our plans for the future. We learned new words and phrases in Hebrew that are commonly used in Israel. The Israelis spoke at a speed that they normally would speak in Israel and this helped the students to cope with a speed that they were previously uncomfortable with. The students gained a lot from the experience and had fun in the process.

On March 4th, the MTA Poetry Slam club traveled uptown to SAR High School to participate in an open-mic slam. The event featured over 70 poets from 10 different schools, and was a tremendous success. MTA poets Yitzy Richter, Yitzchak Fishbach, Shimmy Mandelbaum and Jeremy Herskowitz shared their original works, with great results. 

While MTA did not win any awards this time, the club is looking forward to building on the work from this week and competing in more successful slams in the future.