After a nail-biting finish in Myrtle Beach, S.C.’s regional spelling bee, Chabad Academy fifth-grader David Habibi will head to Washington, D.C., for this summer’s Scripps National Spelling Bee.
For the time being, though, Habibi is relishing a March 9 victory that represents his school’s fourth top finish in some 20 years of competition. Moments after a grueling four-round showdown with first-runner up Adam Battey from Waccamaw Intermediate School – ending when Habibi correctly spelled “ephemeral” – the Jewish preteen was all smiles for an official with a camera.
Holding a golden trophy and a small bobble-head bumble bee, and sporting a skullcap and ritual fringes known as tzitzit, Habibi waved to passing members of the audience as he introduced himself for the video record.
“I won the 2010 spelling bee,” he says in the clip, which is viewable on the Web site of event sponsor The Sun News. “I got a big trophy.”
That trophy is now sitting in a case by the front office of Chabad Academy, a 120-student institution operated under the umbrella of Chabad-Lubavitch of Myrtle Beach. When he came to school on Wednesday, Habibi was greeted like warrior victorious in battle.
“We are so happy and proud of David,” said principal Leah Aizenman, who was in the audience the day before to cheer the student on. “It’s a tough competition, but he wanted to win. In the end, it worked out.”
According to Aizenman, whose own daughter placed second in the spelling bee several years ago, Habibi’s win means a lot for the Jewish community and the region’s sole Jewish day school. It reflects a communal dedication to religious observance and academic excellence, she said, and encapsulates the school’s motto of “work hard, play hard.”
“He competed with people much older than him, all the way up to the eighth grade,” added Rabbi Doron Aizenman, the academy’s head of school and director of the Chabad center. “His family uprooted themselves [from North Carolina] to move to Myrtle Beach because of an unbelievable commitment to Jewish education.
“As we can see,” he continued, “his secular education has never been compromised.”
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