Points of Pride

• 30% of all 2011 National Merit Semi-Finalists from Montgomery County private schools were MJBHA students.  
• In the National Chidon Ha-Tanakh competition, all five of the MJBHA contestants in the Middle School Division finished within the top 12 (out of 82 in the Hebrew day school division from throughout the country); two upper school students finished fourth and eighth. 
• Yeshiva University’s Branka Weintraub Bekiut daf-a-week program was successfully completed by Matthew Kritz (11) and Gedaliah Knizhnik (11); Nathan Weissler (11) successfully completed YU’s Branka Weintraub Bekiut amud a week program; Tani Levitt and Gabe Gross participated in the program as well. 
• Recent acceptances to Ivy League colleges: UPenn, Cornell, Princeton and Columbia.
• Acceptance rate to University of Maryland is currently 30% higher than state-wide acceptance rate. 
• MJBHA Mock Trial team has been undefeated in the regular season for the last two years, reaching the State semi-finals in 2010 and the County semi-finals in 2011.
• Ten percent of the finalists for the 2009 Congressional Art Competition were students of the Helene Berman Seidenfeld Visual Arts Center at MJBHA. 
• MJBHA team named Best Delegation at the 2011 Yeshiva University’s National Model United Nations.
• Boys varsity volleyball won the ISBVL championship and the Boys JV basketball team won the PVAC championship in 2011; Girls MS softball had undefeated season.
• Successes in math: MJBHA students placed in top 20% of all schools nationally in Lower School Math Olympiad; top 12% nationally for all schools nationally in Middle School Math Olympiad; top 1/3 in the County in the by-invitation Middle School Math Counts competition.
• MJBHA honored with President Obama’s Volunteer Service Award in 2011 for its work with the Smart Sacks program, which provides food to needy schoolchildren in the Aspen Hill neighborhood. 
• MJBHA is the only Jewish day school, and one of only thirty K-12 schools in the country, to have earned distinction as an EPA Green Power Partner. Approximately 59% of our power is currently coming from clean, renewable sources- about 17% from solar plus 42% from Clean Currents’ wind power.
• Hamodiya, the newspaper of Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy Upper School, won Gold Medalist recognition in the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) critique for the 2010-2011 school year.