20-Year-Old Voted as “Best Speaker in the World”

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ben-woolgarEngland – A former teenage debating champion has been crowned “Best Speaker in the World” at the World Universities Debating Championships in Manila.

Ben Woolgar, 20, from Belsize Park, won the title earlier this week after competing against nearly 800 speakers.

The third year student, who represented Oxford University, is studying Politics Philosophy and Economics at Balliol College.

The competition, which went on for a week, saw nearly 400 teams from different universities worldwide competing, including Australia, America and Israel.

The participants had just 15 minutes to prepare and then debate a number of motions, including whether private healthcare should be banned and whether there should be free movement of labour.

In 2008, as a pupil at St Paul’s School, Mr Woolgar was part of a four-person team that won the World Schools Debating Championships.

He said of his recent win: “It was a pretty phenomenal surprise but obviously a huge honour. Mostly, it was just a fantastic feeling. It wouldn’t have been possible without my mentor at school, Max, and my England Schools team coach, Debbie who, as Jewish debaters themselves, I’m sure are very proud.”

At the contest, Omar and Sella Nevo, two Israeli brothers from Tel Aviv University won awards for debating using English as a second language section.

{The Jewish Chronicle/Matzav.com Newscenter}


10 COMMENTS

  1. What is a Jewish boy with such special skills doing with them in UNIVERSITY?? As Raish Lakish was told ‘Koacha leOraita!!’

  2. What is a Jewish boy with such special skills doing with them in UNIVERSITY??

    Where should he be? He is young, he wants to learn marketable skills, and he will want to be able to support himself and his future family.

  3. Where should he be?? Where EVERY Jewish boy (and girl) should be at his age – how much MORE so if they were not so fortunate to have been doing it up until then – and that is LEARNING TORAH! and fulfilling the purpose he and everyone of us was CREATED FOR! 🙂
    Just think for a moment, even if you totally ignore for argument’s sake the fact that everyone’s parnassa is decreed for him in shamayim every Rosh Hashana irrespective of the amount of effort that individual puts in (how much more so the number of years of secular education he has) and focus entirely on what non-Torah logic says, a person is a fool to waste the precious little time he has in this world on such ‘knowledge’… (without even going into the question of whether what they teach is even true or beneficial in any way!) How so?
    Simple – they claim that for the 70 or 80 years (at BEST) a person can expect to be around for, an investment of 20+ years of secular education, with all the costs, both direct and in terms of time otherwise used, is justified. How much time therefore according to that logic would be justified to be spent on your ENTERNITY after that where the only knowledge of ANY use is Torah knowledge?? Even if a person was to live to a 1000, every moment he spent doing something other that what he will have to live off FOREVER is only time spent cheating himself!!

  4. So every Rosh Hashana your parnassa is decreed in Shamayim, and it doesn’t depend on how much effort you put in to your own parnassa. Does your parnassa also not depend on how much money you collect from the government or from tzedaka?

  5. Where should he be?? Where EVERY Jewish boy (and girl) should be at his age – how much MORE so if they were not so fortunate to have been doing it up until then – and that is LEARNING TORAH! and fulfilling the purpose he and everyone of us was CREATED FOR!

    Who are you to decide someone else’s path in life? Who do you think you are? Some sort of god?

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