CYHSB Weekly 3/24/2023

CYHSB WEEKLY

Cooper Yeshiva High School for Boys

Volume 18, Issue 13

Parshas Vayikra: Stronger Together

Page 3

March Madness: What You Need to Know

Raanan Vanderwalde (’25) March is here and that means it is time for the NCAA National Basketball Tournaments. With the men’s tournament kicking off just last week and more games being played this weekend, now is the time when all bracket makers are on the edge of their seats hoping their selected teams win.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is the organization that runs all college level sports. In 1939 they first introduced and created the NCAA Division I men's

basketball tournament, which started out with only eight teams. By 1985, the tournament field reached a total of 64 teams, the number that still stands today. The tournament is now well known as “March Madness,” a term first popularized during a live tournament broadcast. Today, almost everyone in America has heard of this iconic sports event, and making March Madness brackets has become a common tradition.

In the tournament, 64 teams are each given a seed of 1-16. There are 4 sections of the

This Week’s Weekly is sponsored by Ezra Wiener in honor of all of the Weekly Staff’s hard work.

March Madness is a great opportunity for students to flex their gambling skills and make some cash. Source: sportingnews.com

bracket each with a set of 16 teams. In the first round, each team competes against their opposite seed in their quadrant (1 plays 16, 2 plays 15, etc). The winner of each of the four quadrants moves on to the final four, and then to the final game where they compete for the NCAA men’s basketball National Championship. Teams are chosen based on a set of requirements and assessments by the NCAA Basketball Committee. 32 teams have automatic spots in the tournament because they won their division. The other teams are chosen by the committee using a system called NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) points, based on judgements of their regular season games.

On average, over 70 million brackets are filled out by Americans every year. A bracket is a list of predictions as to which teams are going to win, all the way to the final game. Many brackets are wagered upon as a fun activity or, if you think you are familiar with the teams, a way to win money. One of the biggest appeals of making a March Madness bracket is the idea that it might be perfect. As a bracket maker myself, I know that there is always the thought in your mind that maybe you will have a perfect bracket. However, the odds of making a perfect bracket are infinitesimally small. If we were to estimate the odds of guessing the correct outcome of a game to be 50%, after calculating the odds for 63 games, your odds of making a perfect bracket are 1 in 9.2

quintillion. To put that number into perspective: The estimated amount of trees in the world is three trillion. Imagine that there was one acorn hidden in one of those three trillion trees, and you were asked which tree has the acorn. Your odds of guessing the correct tree are approximately three million times greater than the odds of picking a perfect bracket. More hopeful bracket makers who believe they have great knowledge of college basketball want to make the chance of correctly picking the outcome of a game 2 in 3 (66.7%). But even in this scenario, the odds of creating a perfect bracket are 1 in 120 billion.

Due to the odds being incredibly low, no perfect bracket has ever been recorded in the history of the 64 team tournament. The longest streak of a perfect bracket ever recorded happened in 2019 when a man correctly guessed the outcome of the first 49 games. This year, no brackets stayed perfect past two days of the tournament (the first round). The reason for this was the surprising nature of this year’s March Madness.

Three surprising wins came in the first round: Furham (13) beat Virginia (4), Princeton (15) beat Arizona (2), and FDU (16) beat Purdue (1). Princeton’s win over Arizona was remarkable, taking down one of the favorites to win in the whole tournament by a score of 59-55. However, even more remarkable was how 16th seeded FDU defeated Purdue, making it only the second time in history that a 16 seed unseated a 1 seed. Three times more people put Purdue winning the National Championship than put them to lose the first round to FDU. Some surprising outcomes came in the second round as well, when Princeton won their second game against Missouri (7), making this the third year in a row that a 15th seeded team has advanced to the Sweet 16 (3rd round). Some more fan favorite teams got wiped out in the second round including Kansas (1) and Marquette (2). Only two 1st seeded teams still remain going into the third round: Houston and Alabama.

This year our high school has a March Madness bracket competition where many students have submitted their picks for the winner of the tournament. While it may be very frustrating to see your teams lose, making a bracket is a very exciting activity. While it might be too late to enter your own March Madness bracket if you haven’t already done so, it is not too late to tune in to watch the remaining games and enjoy the fun.

While upsets are always fun to see, many people get angry when they ruin their perfectly good bracket that would’ve otherwise done realy wel. ESPN.com

Parshas Vayikra: Stronger Together

Last Week’s

Ezra Wiener (’23) Sefer Vayikra is radically different from the other seforim in the Torah, initially creating a sort of pause in the Torah's narrative; it instead primarily focuses on various commandments. The only two narratives found in Sefer Vayikra are the dedication of the Mishkan, which tragically ends with the deaths of Aaron's two sons Nadav and Avihu, and the story of the mekallel who was executed for his blasphemy. The lack of a narrative in Sefer Vayikra turns a lot of people off towards the Sefer, as many find it boring and slow. Now, while it may not be as narratively exciting as the other Seforim in the Torah, Vayikra is full of fascinating mitvzos and procedures that help guide our life, and upon deeper examination reveal deep lessons and powerful takeaways.

׃אָֽטָח.” What these pesukim are telling you is that when someone unwittingly sins he should bring an unblemished female goat as a korban. At first glance this seems to be a pretty standard pasuk telling

Despite being perceived by many as “boring,” Sefer Vayikra is ful of fascinating mitzvos and procedures. Source: evenshesiya.com

Starting off the Sefer is Parshas Vayikra, which has the most words out of any other Parsha in the Sefer. One of the many things this Parsha contains is the laws of korbanos for those who sin, whether it be intentional or unintentional.

When discussing the korbanos required for those who unwittingly sin, Parshas Vayikra in the 4th Perek writes, “

you a basic halacha, yet something is off with the first pasuk: it seems to have an extra word, “תחאַ,” or “one.” The pasuk could have very easily just been written as “שׁפנ־םאו תחאַ הּתשׂעבּ ץראה םעמ הגָגשׁב אטחתּ םשׁאו הנישׂעת־אל רשׁא הוהי תֺוצמּמ” and it would have meant the same thing. Why does the torah add the word “תחאַ?”

There was once a Rabbi of a shul who noticed that a member of his community who used to frequently come to minyan had been missing for a few weeks. The Rabbi was concerned and decided to pay the man a visit and check up on him. The Rabbi knocked on the

man’s door and was greeted by his wife, who guided him to her husband sitting quietly near the fireplace alone in his living room. The Rabbi sat down next to the man and politely asked him why he had been absent from shul. The man responded that he found shul to be too noisy and crowded and felt that he could daven more meaningfully alone at home. Upon hearing this the Rabbi quietly stood up and went towards the fireplace filled with glowing coals. He grabbed one coal from the fireplace and placed it on the floor. He then turned to the man and told him he hoped to see him back in shul shortly. He then left without another word. At first the man was very confused with the Rabbi’s actions, but then it all became clear to him. He realized that the Rabbi was showing him that there is strength in unity. When coals are together they keep each other glowing, but when a coal is removed, it quickly dies out.

This is what the Torah was teaching us with the extra “תחאַ.” When a Jew is with the Klal they are part of an identity that keeps them strong and helps prevent them from violating the will of Hashem. But, if a Jew wants to be “תחאַ,” alone and singular, then it becomes much easier for them to violate the Torah.

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CYHSB Weekly Staff

Editor-in-Chief

Ezra Wiener | ezra.wiener@mhafyos.org

Layout Editor

Ezra Davidovics | ezra.davidovics@mhafyos.org

Editors

Ethan VanderWalde | ethan.vanderwalde@mhafyos.org

Nathan Greenbaum | nathan.greenbaum@mhafyos.org

Raanan Vanderwalde | raanan.vanderwalde@mhafyos.org

Complaint Manager

J.J. Stein | jacob.stein@mhafyos.org

CYHSB Weekly Staff

Akiva Levine | akiva.levine@mhafyos.org

Amit Zalman | amit.zalman@mhafyos.org

Avi Becker | avi.becker@mhafyos.org

Baruch Finkleman | baruch.finkleman@mhafyos.org

Rafi Davidovics | rafael.davidovics@mhafyos.org

Joshua Parcover | joshua.parcover@mhafyos.org

Yaron Weiss | yaron.weiss@mhafyos.org

Benny Freiden | benny.freiden@mhafyos.org

Rafi Goldkin | rafael.goldkin@mhafyos.org

Yosef VanderWalde | yosef.vanderwalde@mhafyos.org

Nadav Lowell | nadav.lowell@mhafyos.org

Jojo Ardestani | jonathan.ardestani@mhafyos.org

Yonah Lynn | yonah.lynn@mhafyos.org

Administrative Advisors

Mrs. Ashley Brown

Rabbi Dov Rossman

From the Editor

“United we stand, divided we fall.” This quote from John Dickinson is over 200 years old but still hold true today. While we learn many important things from Vayikra, one very important lesson we get from this week’s parsha is the power of unity in Klal Yisrael. While there is of course value in independence and solitude, like most things in life you need a balance, and a balance between one’s independence and be unified with those around him is very important.