The World's Next Top Torah Scholar

This coming Tuesday, on Israel’s Independence Day, the finals of the Chidon HaTanakh—the International Bible Contest—will take place in Jerusalem and will be broadcast live across the country. It’s a major television event, a game show where Torah trivia is the only subject; think Jeopardy for Jews. As in every other year, several Americans will be among the contestants seeking to translate their mastery of the minutiae of the Hebrew Bible into victory. And as in every other year, they will be expected to lose.

Since the international competition’s inception more than five decades ago, only three Americans have ever taken home the top prize. Almost always an Israeli has been crowned champion. The spectacle of students from around the world repeatedly being trounced by the locals has long been the source of both amusement and controversy in Israel. Neriah Pinchas, who won the Chidon in 1980 and has written the questions for the contest since 1987, recalls how Prime Minister Menachem Begin was confronted by a reporter during a Torah study group at his home and asked what purpose was served by an international competition in which the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Pinchas recounted: “They asked him, ‘Why do we need an international Bible quiz if the Israelis always win?’ ” Begin answered, fittingly, by citing a biblical verse: “Look, when a kid from Canada or Australia or Switzerland takes first place, we will have a problem,” he said, “because it says, ‘ki mi-Tzion tetze Torah, u’devar Hashem miyerushalayim’ ”—for the Torah shall come forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (Isaiah 2:3). “It doesn’t say ‘ki mi-Montreal’ [from Montreal], it says ‘ki mi-Tzion’ [from Zion],” Begin observed. “So if a foreign contestant wants to be victorious, they can come to Israel and make aliyah, and only here will they win!” After all, the Bible says so.