Right after completing the hour-long national Bible contest in New York City last month, Hillel Academy sixth grader Michael Wicentowski said he “could already tell I did well.”
The word “well” is an understatement considering Wicentowski took first place in his age division against 60 other students, ages 11 to 13, from around the country.
Even more impressive is that three other Hillel Academy sixth graders — Miri Turgeman, Moshe Robbins and Danny Wicentowski, Michael’s twin — won second, third and fourth places, respectively.
“Baruch HaShem! We are very proud,” said Rabbi Yoel Turgeman, Hillel Academy principal, sixth and second grade teacher and father of Miri. “They worked very hard.”
Indeed they did. The students were required to attend weekly, hour-and-a-half after-school study sessions since the beginning of the school year to prepare for the contest, which was sponsored by the Jewish Agency for Israel. Turgeman also taught the after-school study class.
“At first we learned Samuel II,” said Michael. “Then we’d go over worksheets and they’d give us lots of practice tests.”
Michael attributed much of his success to these many mock tests. He was so confident of his level of preparation that he claims he “wasn’t nervous” before the two-part written test.
Second-place winner Turgeman admitted to being “kind of nervous before the competition,” but once it began she said she felt confident. Nevertheless, she said she was “surprised when I got second. I was excited and I called my dad right away.”
Third-place winner Moshe Robbins also admitted to a slight case of the nerves, but “once I saw a few of the questions, they were mostly like what our teacher gave us to practice with.”
Turgeman admitted he was surprised that his students dominated the competition but attributed their success to their hard work.
He also pointed out that he has taught “for 17 years. I think I knew what they needed to study, and I [successfully] guessed which questions [to prepare the students] for on the tests. So we were successful.”
Fourth-place winner Danny Wicentowski, unlike his twin brother Michael, claims he “didn’t study at all, nothing. I had not studied for two months before the test….”
Although neither twin was nervous before the test, Danny was calm for a different reason than his well-prepared brother.
“I wasn’t really nervous because I didn’t think I’d do well. But I was surprised that it was kind of easy,” he said. “I was very surprised I got such a good score.”
Michael said the whole experience taught him that, “if you go for something and try really hard, you can succeed.”
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