Thanks in large part to Montclair resident Josh Weston, some 96 young Israelis were among the 10,000 children and teenagers testing their intellectual and technical skills this month at a competition in Atlanta's Georgia Dome.

The middle and high school students enjoyed three days of competition as members of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), building robots and Web sites and sharing ideas with teams of fellow competitors and coaches from 23 countries.

Often called the "NCAA of Smarts," the competition included five teams from Israel thanks to the financial and logistical support of Weston, the retired CEO and honorary chair of the Roseland-based Automatic Data Processing.

As a benefactor of Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, Weston helped persuade its administration to get behind FIRST. Working with Technion three years ago, Weston helped enlist 12 high schools in Haifa and 24 in Tel Aviv to sponsor the program and provide three of the winning students with fellowships.

In addition, he persuaded an Israeli business partner, Avihu Ben Nun, the former air force chief of staff, to aid in raising money for the Israeli teams – which also receive small government stipends from the Ministry of Education.

United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey also provided support to bring the Israeli teens to the United States for the FIRST competition.

FIRST is about "more than building robots," said Weston, a prominent philanthropist in and outside the MetroWest Jewish community. "It gives kids the opportunity to communicate with each other. In every match they have to work with kids from other schools, to learn how to deal with adults, and know about computers and design and physics."

Weston became a booster of the program after becoming involved in business dealings with its founder, Dean Kamen, best known for inventing the Segway, the high-tech scooter.

After meeting Kamen and attending a FIRST competition in New York, Weston said, he thought, "This thing would really be good for Israel."

On a trip to Tel Aviv last month, Weston sat beside one of FIRST's biggest boosters, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, to watch the Israeli teens compete at Yad Eliyahu Stadium.

Peres, said Weston, "has been very interested in developing stronger technical education through FIRST" – and more.

"Peres has been after Dean Kamen for three years to broaden the competition to include Palestinians," said Weston. "But I told Peres, ‘You're getting ahead of your time. If they first include Israeli Arabs, then, let's go to Jordan. It is a more reasonable country, and it is stable. Then maybe you go to the Palestinians.'"

The 10-person Israeli team who competed in Atlanta included Jews, Arabs, and Druze, as well as a 16-year-old refugee from Darfur.

Identified only as Adam, the Darfurian's first residence in Israel was a jail cell, where he was sent after being caught entering the country illegally from Egypt.

After several months of incarceration, he was sent to Yemin Orde, a boarding school near Haifa for young immigrants, where he excelled in physics.

The Israeli teams ended the contests with mixed results, with one team from Misgav finishing in second place and others from Kibbutz Ein Shemer and Kiryat Motzkin in 71st and 76th places out of 86 in one high school division.

In other divisions, one Israeli team from Tamara ranked 53 of 86; another, from Emek Hefer, placed 71 out of 86.

Weston believes the FIRST program will continue expanding; he said he sees its core mission going way beyond student competition in the world of science.

"The winners receive awards for best robots, best designs, and best Web sites, but the biggest prize they give is for sportsmanship," he said. "They are trying to help kids beyond technology to be better citizens."

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