On Sunday, June 14th, the 10th annual Martin Weiselberg Memorial Hockey Tournament will be taking place at Yeshivat Har Torah in Queens, and MTA is proud to the exclusive event partner of this year's prestigious elementary school tournament. 

"MTA's association with the tournament is a first for us and is exciting on many levels," stated event organizer Elliot Weiselberg. "It's an honor to have a respected high school like MTA, with a storied hockey program such as theirs, supporting our event." An original member of the Metropolitan Yeshiva High School Hockey League, MTA is one of the winningest hockey programs, having achieved eight varsity titles in the league's 35 year span. 

Of the previous nine Weiselberg Tournament Most Valuable Player awards, three have gone to boys who eventually became Lions' players, more than can be claimed by any other high school. Among them are current MTA JV Head Coach Noah Isaacs ('11), who held the single-tournament scoring record until last year, and graduating senior Ami Rosenfeld ('15), who won the award twice, with his two older brothers, Gabe ('11) and Eitan ('13), each winning All-Tournament team awards during their years of participation. 

The tournament is dedicated to the memory of Martin Weiselberg (Avraham Menashe ben Dov Ber HaLevi). Marty, father of tournament organizer Elliot Weiselberg, passed away on March 28th, 2006; he was a loving father, son and husband who believed in the values of sport, the importance of life, and the enjoyment of all that it encircled. Most importantly, Marty was a supporter of the children. Funds raised at the tournament will be donated to Hatzalah.

We look forward to an enjoyable and successful tournament!   

Last week, the seniors went up to the Poconos for their final trip as MTA students. After Shacharis on Monday morning, we departed MTA for a sports complex, where we enjoyed archery tag, bubble soccer, Nerf gun wars, and basketball. After lunch, we went to Dorney Park for a little over 2 hours, plenty of time to enjoy all the rides they offered, due at least in part to the overcast weather conditions which kept the crowds at bay. After conquering Dorney Park, we left for the nearby Congregation Sons of Israel, a shul in Allentown, PA, where we davened Minchah, ate a deli dinner, and spent some time learning Torah. Our day came to an end with our arrival at Split Rock Resort, where we were given access to use the multiple tennis and basketball courts available there, and later being treated to a delicious midnight barbecue before turning in for the night in our respective villas. 

The next day we tackled the rapids in the Lehigh River Gorge on a white-water rafting excursion. The slight drizzle that accompanied us on our trip downriver wasn't able to dampen our spirits, as we braved the multiple Class III rapids that the river threw at us. When we returned to the resort, we dug into yet another noteworthy barbecue dinner, before making use of the on-site bowling, racquetball, pool, and arcade facilities. Later that night, we enjoyed some kugel and chulent, as well as the senior video, before finally hitting the hay. 

On Wednesday, we were given the option of going on a hike with Mr. Gillers in the Lehigh Valley Gorge or going paint-balling. Once both of those activities were completed, we headed out to a rest stop to daven Minchah and eat dinner. After a group photo, we went back on the buses to our respective communities. Big thanks to Rabbi Green and Rabbi Shulman for organizing our immensely successful trip, as well as to Mr. Kay and Five Star Caterers for providing outstanding food for the manymeals we enjoyed on the trip.

That was a successful investment, but I needed something bigger. I realized that in order to win I needed to invest in highly volatile stocks. Such volatile stocks would have a market cap of under 1 billion dollars, and have a per share price of under 15 dollars. Such possibilities can be found in the biotech sector and even more so the immunotherapy oncology subsector. 

Over time, I noticed specific people on the investorvillage.com and stocktwits.com websites who were often accurate in their predictions of the movement of the few stocks I became interested in. Ziopharm was in the early stages of getting involved in the oncology immunotherapy market,  specifically the CAR-T sector within the immunotherapy market. Ziopharm had Randall Kirk, a very successful entrepreneur in the Biotech sector, on their board and heavily involved in the company. I knew that in order to make money in the biotech sector, I had to invest before any announcements were made; the announcements were going to take the share price much higher. Using all the information I gathered, and with my own conviction, I invested in Ziopharm Oncology (ZIOP) and patiently waited for their announcements, which would bring it to soar to over double its price. I would not invest in Ziopharm any more, even if I believed the shares would continue to go up, as they had already had the run that I was expecting. In the future, I would also invest in Sorrento therapeutics (SRNE), a car-t technology stock which is involved in the Natural Killer (NK) cell market. They have an allogenic NK cell which they are developing with Conkwest Inc., a company that will go public shortly. In following the money, I also learned that Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong recently invested 50 million dollars in Conkwest. Dr. Pat is the richest doctor in America and one would assume he must know what he is doing. If you watch his YouTube videos, you will find he sounds very convincing. 

The best advice that I can give everyone is to do your homework and be in the forefront of the sector that you are investing in!

Last Thursday, three students enjoyed a delicious meal at Golan Heights with Morah Haibi, a well liked and highly respected teacher in our Hebrew Department. Not everyone is lucky enough to spend their lunch at Golan with Morah Haibi, so how did these three boys do it? As part of MTA's annual Chinese auction, in which funds are raised for various charitable causes, one of the prizes offered was lunch and a "shmooze" about Israel with Morah Haibi for the winner and two friends. This year, that prize was won by Reuven Penn, who selected two friends and headed across Amsterdam Avenue together with Morah Haibi. During the meal, the topics ranged from popular bands to birthdays to Israeli Current Events. The boys learned a lot from Morah Haibi about the recent conflict in Israel with the French company "Orange" and other BDS related topics facing Israel today.  The boys enjoyed their unique opportunity and thank Morah Haibi for lunch!

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Click here for coverage of the event in the Jewish Link of New Jersey

This past Monday during lunch, MTA Music Vs. (Click here to learn more about Music Vs.) club ran a special event in the Heights. Six students, Dov Tuchman, Hillel Krief, Ari Englander, Yisrael Danesh, Zvi Goldstein and Jason Blatt (the MTA representative of Music Vs.) visited an elderly women who lives in Washington Heights and who just needed someone to help brighten her day.  

With their guitar, voices and spirits high, the group sang and spoke with this woman, explaining to her who they were and how they were there to make her smile.  As luck would have it, three out of our four students were members of the MTA Chorus providing the woman an extra special treat showing her a little arrangement they had recently learned.  It was an incredible experience, one that's very hard to find.  

MTA Music Vs. will be up and running again starting next Fall, but until then have a great summer and remember that with music, happiness is always achievable. 

This past Tuesday, the unique "Meet the Author" class in MTA had its last skype meeting with their author/mentor Chana Bat-Shahar. The class ended with the discussion of what they had learned throughout the year writing short stories in Hebrew under the supervision of the teacher Ms. Haibi and under the mentorship of Ms. Bat-Shahar.

The question got split into two parts, the first being "What did you learn from the story itself". Many answers were presented about how details bring out characters and how to use language to create pace and tone. The general consensus was the recognition that a story is different on paper then it is when read out loud, in the sense that one always wants to demonstrate the characters' actions and emotions but never exactly say them. This becomes a big point in the revision of the stories in an effort to make the stories clear and concise. 

Question number two was, "What did you learn from the course in general?" The answers were sporadic in this discussion, but the main idea boiled down to "Hebrew is different than English". This sounds obvious, but when one goes to write a story, one will of course prefer to write it in the language that he knows best. When writing in a second language, one must realize that the words do not flow on paper the way they initially did in one's head. The amount of editing which must be done is thus the quantifiable difference between the writing in the two languages. As an example, English usually has an opening for flowery prose but Hebrew, being the language of organization that it is, needs strict explanation of a scene, which ends up breeding its own aesthetic.

The students are looking forward to seeing their final edited stories in print, as they will be published in a journal as part of a collection kept in the National Library of Isreal, and to seeing where this class takes them as writers now born from two languages.  

This past Monday marked the end of a very successful year of Scientific Engineering, led by Mrs. HLZacks. Over the past few months the engineering class has, in groups of 3 to 4 students, been building devices of their own design, ranging from 3D printers to drones to automated home inventory systems. Monday morning was dominated by a constant buzz of activity in the lab and the library, as students rushed to make sure their projects were in working order, put finishing touches on their poster boards, and get everything set up downstairs. After setting up their projects for display in the library, engineering students heard from a guest speaker on the topic of autonomous underwater drones. They then had the opportunity to participate in a 3D modelling workshop with "Dr. Dov."

Throughout the day, students and faculty could come in to see the projects displayed in the library. In the evening, parents were invited to the symposium to see the projects to which their sons had dedicated so much of their time to over the past year. The symposium and the day as a whole was a tremendous success. 

Many people - parents, faculty and students - reported being amazed at the magnitude and success of many of the projects and at how much the engineering class had accomplished over the course of just a few months. Much of this success is due to the guidance of Mrs. HLZ and the help of Dr. Dov throughout the year. The class gave students valuable experience in engineering that they could not have gained in a typical classroom setting.

This year, MTA's Teaneck/Bergenfield community had the opportunity to participate in a new program, run by our very own 9th grade Rebbe, Rabbi Eli Cohn. One of the benefits that MTA students enjoy is having no regular school on Fridays, but one problem which the students in the Teaneck/Bergenfield area have faced in the past is finding a good Shacharis Minyan that is suitable for everybody! Starting this year, MTA solved this problem by creating its own Minyan at Rabbi Sobolofsky's Shul, Congregation Ohr HaTorah in Bergenfield. 

But besides a great davening, the students this year were able to benefit as well from an awesome Shiur given by Rabbi Cohn on the topic of Hilchos Shemittah, as this year was a Shemittah year in Eretz Yisrael. Breakfast was served, usually including donuts and orange juice, and the enjoyable Shiur followed on virtually every Friday throughout the school year. 

The students would like to thank Rabbi Cohn for all his hard work in putting these Shuirim together and for hosting them at his house for the last Shuir.  

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This past Wednesday evening, as 6:15 slowly approached, two Arista Members sat outside the open MTA Library doors giving out schedules and class locations for the bi-annual MTA Study Night run by the Arista Honors Society, in preparation for Final Exams. As the students began to buzz around the second floor, the teachers started to take up their posts in their designated rooms, and as the classrooms gained students, the library too slowly gained a steady hum that never died down. The permeable excitement was felt as groups of students sat together, all helping and tutoring each other, while the air was filled with the sounds of various subjects fused together, with discussions of arc lengths and anti-derivatives with Rabbi Brand to semicolons and British Dystopian Fiction with Mr. Kulnis. The constant discussions spread out to various classrooms in which more specific topics were reviewed by all the staff that stayed late on their own time especially to help the students prepare for their tests.

The subject with the most teachers present was Science, with all four teachers reviewing in their own unique way: Mr. Berenson, with multicolored drawings of a phospholipid bilayers and intron differentiation, helped explained the deep concepts surrounding the human body. Similar events took place in the two other Biology classrooms, with Mr. Fein and Ms. HLZ taking different approaches to the review, one with a more laid-back discussion while the other zipping questions trying to cover all the materiel. Mr. Goldberg helped his Chemistry class with the long and complicated formulas that needed to be reduced or oxidized. Rabbi Brand was in the library manning two different tables for Math and Physics, while Mr. Segal and Mr. Rosner helped out their respective ninth and tenth graders with intricate concepts that needed a longer review outside the regular class.

For History, Mr. Semach was able to commandeer the Faculty Room for his final study night, bringing a more relaxed atmosphere to the subject. Dr. Taylor offered Regents prep in his office, combining audio and oral elements to the various topics covered by the World History Regents. Mrs. Siegfried took her final review to one of the classroom with a meticulous review of the difference between words like affect and effect (something which many people older then ninth grade still can not understand).

Our thanks go to Mrs. Levitt who organized the program, the food, and the drinks that made the program possible, as well as to the conductors of the night, Mikey Hizami and Miki Kolber, who made the entire thing possible. We all hope that the studying will pay off for the upcoming finals!