THE RAMBAM RECORD
The eNewsletter of Rambam Mesivta High School
February 28, 2005 / 19 Adar

B-Ball "Madness" Comes to Rambam!

This time every year, B-Ball "madness" overcomes everyone at Rambam as the Annual February Madness Basketball tournament climbs its way to a thrilling finale. This year, the team lead by senior Doniel Weinstein and including junior Aaron Friedman, sophomore Elliot Tanzman and freshman Jeffrey Riechman came out on top after a spirited contest against the second-place team lead by senior Elan Kattan and sophomore Jonathan Lustbader.

The 3-on-3 tournament format is designed to encourage equal participation by all. It features teams with players who are selected from different grades.

The school is split into 32 teams which are put in a North, South, East or West Bracket. The teams play quarter court games for the 1st and 2nd round, and half court games for the 3rd and 4th round and the final championship contest. The games feature two halves of seven minutes each so the play is truly up-tempo. (More...)

Welcome to Rambam

With the theme of "Rambam Mesivta: Be Part of It, " members of next year’s freshmen class joined us at a “Meet the Chevra Event” this past Motzei Shabbat.

Prospective students got a chance to meet each other, our talmidim, and rebbeim. The boys played basketball, deck hockey, air hockey, chess and learned the secrets behind a few magic tricks.

The happy event was topped off by some pizza and ice cream sundaes.

"Everyone had a blast," said Rambam activities guy Tzvi Hershenov "We can't wait to see them back at our annual June barbeque for incoming freshmen."

Rambam Hosts Debate

On Thursday, February 25th, schools from all over the New York Metropolitan area convened at Rambam as the school hosted its Ninth Annual Rambam Mesivta Debate. Over 35 teams from nine schools went head-to-head for over four hours debating the issue posited by the host school - Resolved: The United States of America Should Withdraw from the United Nations.

Teams were selected to argue either the affirmative or the negative side of the issue. Schools participating included Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy (SAR), Flatbush Yeshiva, RAMAZ, Ezra Academy, Davis Renov Stahler (DRS), Hebrew Academy of Five Towns and Rockawy (HAFTR), Rambam, Central Yeshiva High School for Girls and Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls (SKA).

Do You Know These Words?

The focus on vocabulary at Rambam has a playful intensity with the posting each day of the Rambam Words of the Day. Each day, two challenging SAT-type words are posted for the students to learn and use during their regular school day.

"We've been doing this since the beginning of last year," said Rambam English teacher John Stevens, "Occasionally, I overhear the students trying to impress each other or their teachers by using the word in context."

Certain Rambam Words of the Day have entered Rambam lore as classics, such as boondoggle and doppelganger. How many of the following Rambam Words of the Day do you know?

• Paucity
• Plethora
• Remonstrate
• Ludic
• Diphthong
• Epenthesis
• Digraph
• Repast

(Click here for definitions...)

The creators of the RoboCup 2005 website have chosen to use the robot created by the Rambam team in last year's competition as one of the student creations featured on the home page of their website http://www.robocup2005.org

In last year's competition, the Rambam team earned First Prize in the Dance Competition of the Northeast Regional Competition. The winning team was invited to participate in the worldwide finals competition in Lisbon, Portugal.

This year's final is being held in Osaka, Japan and the Rambam Robotics teams are actively designing and constructing this year's model.

The students of the Rambam Web Club have created and published their first two Internet games for inclusion on the Rambam.org website - the Rambam Memory Game and the Rambam Trivia Game.

(Go to http://www.rambam.org and choose the Games button on the navigation bar on the left.)

"Our goal was to make the games Rambam-specific," said freshman Joshua Septimus, one of the members of the club, "So, our focus was to keep the content unique to the school."

The Rambam Memory Game is a simple "memory match" challenge with Rambam photos as the images that are to be matched. The Rambam Triva Challenge is modeled after the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire television show and features trivia questions about Rambam teachers.

The basic structure of the games was initially created by contributors to the http://www.flashkit.com website. It is a free and legal download that has been modified for content by the members of the club using Macromedia's Flash MX software.

Look for new and updated games from the club as the semester progresses!