National Merit Scholarship Winner

Earlier this week it was announced that 12th grader Jeremy Cooper was one of 8,300 students from a pool of 1.5 million across the nation chosen to receive the prestigious National Merit Scholarship.  The Commercial Appeal reported that only nineteen student from the Memphis area won the award this year: three from White Station, three from Germantown High, two from MUS, two from Hutchinson, two from St. Mary's, one from Arlington, one from Bolton, one from Collierville, one from Lausanne, one from Houston, one from the Mississipi School for Mathematics and Science, and one from a school inordinately smaller than all the others: the Margolin Hebrew Academy / Feinstone Yeshiva of the South.


This week also brought us the good news that Jeremy, who will be attending Yeshivat Har Etzion next year before heading off to Columbia University, along with last year's graduate Maddie Tavin, who is currently completing a year of study at Shaalvim for Women before heading to the Stern College Honors Program, have been accepted into the Tikvah Foundation's Summer Institute at Yale University.  The Institute is a three week intensive learning seminar headed by Rabbi Dr. Meir Soleveitchik whose theme this year is "Jewish Thought and the Good Society: Politics, Economics, and the Human Person."  With a wide array of impressive speakers and teachers lined up, the program is bound to be most enriching for both of them.