‘Jeopardy’ for Jews: Who Wants To Be the World’s Next Top Torah Scholar?

Israelis usually win the International Bible Contest. But one year, two young Americans defied the odds in a televised showdown.

Chidon contestants at the Jerusalem Theater on May 10, 2011. (Muki Schwartz/Israeli Ministry of Education)

On stage proceedings. Aster placed a small Canadian flag at his place on the dais, in full view of the audience and cameras. Feldman aped the Israeli practice of answering questions through the recitation of large chunks of the biblical text, rattling off a section of Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs) to the delight of the judges.Slowly contestants were eliminated. But thanks to the easy written exam, several contenders still retained perfect scores going into the final round, so that everything came down to the final question, traditionally posed by the prime minister—in this case, Yitzhak Shamir. (In 2010, Avner Netanyahu had his own chances ruined when he stumbled on the question asked by his own father.) Wieder was calm. “I like to say that on the final question, the pressure was all on the Israelis and not on me,” he said, “because nobody expected me to do anything.” The last query presented the contestants with 10 biblical citations of the word shalom (peace) and asked them first to identify where they came from and second to provide information about each instance. Wieder got 19 of the 20 answers correct. When the dust settled, he had tied for first with a young Tunisian-Israeli woman named Zehava Hadad, while Aster had placed fourth and Feldman fifth.

The result was so surprising that multiple conspiracy theories soon surfaced alleging collusion behind it. “When Jeremy tied with the Israeli girl from Be’er Sheva,” recalled Spierer, “the Americans thought really Jeremy had won, but they [the judges] were too embarrassed to let him win and made it a tie.” On the Israeli side, the opposite accusation was leveled by one of the runners-up. “This Israeli guy alleged publicly that he had been robbed, and that basically the political establishment wanted it to go to a non-Israeli and wanted it to go to a woman,” said Feldman. The Chidon denied any such schemes.

For his part, Wieder maintains that the victory was a “fluke” brought about by the overly forbearing written exam. “Almost any other year, there’s no chance I’d have been in the running for the final question,” he claimed. But fluke or not, Wieder became first American to win since 1973, when Leora Reich of Yeshiva of Flatbush in Brooklyn took home the gold. And Wieder’s feat would not be repeated until 2013, when Yishai Eisenberg, a freshman from Yeshiva University High School for Boys, would tie for first place.

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“I think you can see a lot about a person by 18,” Feldman told me, looking back on his experience. “You can’t see everything, but you can see a lot.” Both he and Wieder had displayed flashes of their futures in their quest for the Chidon championship, and both would take what the Chidon gave them into their chosen fields, where each have achieved excellence in very different arenas.

Wieder went on to receive rabbinic ordination and soon became the youngest rabbinic dean in the history of Yeshiva University. Unusual for a rosh yeshiva, he also completed a doctorate in rabbinic literature at New York University. Today he teaches Talmud and Bible, and credits the Chidon for giving him a strong grounding in Tanakh—particularly in the lesser-known areas of Nevi’im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings)—at a time when he was tilting more and more toward studying the Jewish oral tradition of the Mishna, Talmud, and their commentaries. “Having learned the material left a lasting impact for me,” he said, “and having this knowledge store of Tanakh outside of Torah is something I consider extremely valuable, just in my learning in general.”

Feldman would attend Harvard, where he graduated with the highest GPA in his class. He then studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, completed Yale Law School, and clerked for Justice David Souter of the Supreme Court. After stints teaching at NYU and advising the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, he joined the faculty at Harvard Law School, where then-Dean Elena Kagan—now a Supreme Court justice—dubbed him “one of the stars of his generation.” For the past six semesters, he has co-taught a class on Jewish law and legal theory.

Surveying a career that has often dealt with the nexus of politics and religion, Feldman considers the Chidon to be “one of the most important educational experiences of my life.” First, “the Chidon was the main reason that I was able to go on to read medieval Hebrew poetry,” which is rife with biblical allusions. (Feldman wrote his senior thesis in college on the subject.) Similarly, the knowledge paid dividends when Feldman tackled English literature and other literary corpuses filled with references to the Bible. Finally, he said, “there’s the internal religious-slash-spiritual value of being able to feel connected to this incredible foundational text.” For Feldman, the Chidon “just opened whole worlds.”

Imbibing the Bible as a teenager, it turns out, made winners of everyone.