Under the direction of Matt Okin and Danny Hoffman of BlackBox Studio, our students recently produced the original production of No Time for Sergeants.
Our musicians meet regularly to play together. The music club has expanded exponentially and with more and more students lending their talents to one of the two music groups.
The Outdoors Club is an extra curricular club that meets throughout the year to hike and participate in outdoor oriented activities in the New York and New Jersey area. The club has gone on hikes in Harriman State Park, Ramapo State Forest, the Palisades State Park and the Ramapo Reservation. The club has also met for indoor rock climbing. The club plans to expand its activities to include backpacking, snowshoeing and possibly outdoor rock-climbing. The club is run by a student president and vice-president and a parent advisor. Most activities take place on Sundays and are free except for any park fees which are announced in advance. All students are welcome to participate. The president and vice-president for 2011-2012 are juniors Nachum Fisch and Dan Friedman. The club's activities and outgoing president were recognized with a nomination for the 2011 L.L. Bean Outdoor Hero Award.
The Pre-Law Club runs four programs throughout the year, providing students with speakers and trips to experience numerous components of the law. Speakers have included investigators, district attorneys, and a Rabbi/lawyer who spoke about the comparisons between the Jewish and the United States legal systems.
Mock Trial is an imitation courtroom competition sponsored by the New Jersey State Bar Association. For the past eleven years Coach Yigal Marcus (’93) has trained two teams, defense and prosecution, consisting of lawyers, witnesses and observers. The students compete against opposing teams from other schools in the state, and are judged by volunteer attorneys in a survival or elimination process to produce a Bergen County championship team which then competes on a state-wide and then national level. Torah Academy has been the Bergen County champion four times. In 1999, TABC finished third in the entire state of New Jersey. In 2005, the TABC team won the New Jersey state-wide championship and represented New Jersey in the national competition in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2007, the team advanced to the county finals.
The TABC Debate Team travels to debate tournaments throughout the metropolitan area, competing with other yeshiva high school students. Teams of two students take the affirmative or negative side of a topical issue, such as the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance and the relevance of the United Nations. Debating cultivates the students’ logic and speaking skills, preparing them for their personal and professional lives.
For over two decades, Yeshiva University has hosted an annual Model United Nations conference. The conference, known colloquially as YUNMUN, brings together students from across the nation (and in recent years, the world) for stimulating discussion and debate in the format that is practiced in the United Nations. For many years now, TABC has provided one of the largest delegation of students and has performed successfully over the course of the event. TABC students have represented the full spectrum of committees on YUNMUN from the World Food Program (WFP) to the Security Council (SC), and have even held seats in the highly coveted International Court of Justice (ICJ).
For the last three years, TABC has enjoyed tremendous success competing in the Regional Science Olympiad. Teams of fifteen students from yeshivas in the NJ/NY area participate in the competition. Categories include Experimental and Theoretical Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Engineering. TABC placed first in 2004 and 2005 and received the Award of Excellence from the National Science Olympiad.
College Bowl is a quiz-show format league competition against other metropolitan area yeshiva high schools. There are Varsity (primarily twelfth graders) and Junior Varsity (primarily ninth through eleventh graders) teams with four students from each team competing at one time.