Junior Aaron Liss skillfully shuffles his deck as he waits for the spectator to select a card: the five of spades. Without looking, Liss reorganizes the deck and pulls out the spectator’s card. Shocked applause from the audience echoes around the room.

Liss has been practicing magic for four years, and is the student leader of the revived Magic Club, which meets during Huggim and is also offered to high school students on Fridays. Middle school Jewish text teacher Rabbi Marc Blatt, who is also a magician, serves as the faculty adviser.

Blatt started magic when he was just six years old, after receiving a magic kit for Hanukkah. He decided to chaperone the club because he was looking for a way to get involved with the school as a new teacher.

Blatt is not the first adviser of this club. In 2009, Jewish text teacher Rabbi Reuvane Slater spearheaded a magic club that closed after four years due to a lack of interest. Slater thinks that the club attendance initially declined because the members were only interested in learning simple tricks and not in comprehending the art of magic. Liss wants to change this mentality with his new approach, which is to teach members how to create their own tricks from scratch.

According to Liss, in order for magicians to be successful, they must be quick with their fingers. Card illusions come a lot easier to Liss because of his background in piano.

“I’d like to believe that card magic can be done [by] anybody who has the patience with practice,” Liss said.

Two years ago, Liss was able to interact with fellow magicians at the Society of American Magicians convention. At the convention, he discovered a competition called Stars of Tomorrow, for which he and many other contestants submitted individual videos of their tricks. Liss and five others were chosen as winners and invited to Annapolis, Md. to perform for four days in front of professional magicians.

Liss’ magic career has already taken off, as he has performed as paid entertainment at bar mitzvahs, weddings and birthday parties. He may consider it as a full-time occupation after he completes college.

“I have found that it is good for me morally to make people happy, so when I perform magic I realize that entertaining is definitely something I want to do in the future,” Liss said.

While Liss sees magic as a career opportunity, sophomore Ethan Chanin views it as more of a hobby. When Chanin is bored, he enjoys learning magic tricks on YouTube. It takes him approximately 30 minutes to learn a new trick, but days to perfect it. Chanin particularly enjoys learning sleight of hand tricks, such as manipulating certain cards discretely, and “like[s] the reactions” of his audience.

Like Chanin, Slater also enjoys watching his audience’s reaction to the intricacies of a trick. Sometimes, he even treats his students to a magic trick during or after class.

Ever since he was seven years old, Slater has been interested in magic. He even had a magic theme for his bar mitzvah party. He feels the most important skill necessary to succeed in magic is not as much doing the actual trick, but rather having the ability to keep an audience entertained.

“[I like] the secrecy of [magic,] the idea of things going on without people knowing necessarily, and understanding that something that you see looks a certain way, but is totally different behind the scenes,” Slater said.