JTA — While many of his classmates at his Orthodox high school in Los Angeles spent the last year juggling school and social life, Jackson Shrier was studying the Tanach, or Hebrew Bible, for five hours a day.

He was training for the Chidon HaTanach, or International Bible Quiz, a centerpiece of Israel’s Independence Day festivities that was founded by the country’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, and has been held annually for over 60 years.

That dedication paid off last week, when Shrier placed second in the competition, fending off Jewish teens from Israel and around the world who similarly had prevailed in regional competitions.

Shrier, 15, went by his Hebrew name, Akiva, during the competition and wowed the judges with his Hebrew proficiency. He was not the only American to place highly in the contest: Joshua Appelbaum of Washington, DC, finished in third, while Hadassah Esther Ritch of Highland Park, New Jersey, came in fourth.

In fact, while the winner of the showdown was Hodaya Cohen, an Israeli 11th-grader from the southern agricultural community of Nir Akiva, this year marked a banner showing for the Americans, and was one of their strongest performances since 1973, when the first, second, and third place winners were all American.

An American has won the competition once since then, when Yishai Eisenberg tied for first place with Elior Bevian in 2013. A smattering of Americans and other foreign nationals have also come second and third over the years.

“When you’re an American, you know, usually the top American is like third or fourth, maybe fifth, but second place is… special either way,” Shrier said. “So when I got second place, I was just quite a bit shocked.”

Shrier, who attends YULA High School in Los Angeles, said that, unlike in the United States, many of the Israeli competitors attend religious schools where preparation for the contest is built into the school day, sometimes for hours on end.

After first learning about the competition from a camp counselor before entering sixth grade, Shrier steadily ramped up his studies. He escalated his investment even more following his win at........

© The Times of Israel