Graduation Projects are independent research projects that our seventh-grade students present to all students and school families on the day of their graduation.  We're proud of the interesting topics selected by our former graduates, and the fine work performed in completing their projects.  Many Graduation Projects include an audio-visual component.  We invite all our graduates to submit their research papers or presentations to us for inclusion on this page.

• Jonathan Bird - Jewish Influence in the Comic Book Industry
• Milana Borodkin - Jewish Mysticism
• Brian Colquist - The Jewish Rock n' Roll "Challah" Fame Honors Geddy Lee
• James Haber - Jewish Migration in the United States
• Jason Lefkowitz - Traditions: From Atheist to Orthodox
• Noah Shapiro - Louis Brandeis
• Avi Weiss - Antisemitism in America

• Avery Matthew Gordon
• David M. Lefkowitz

• Skyler Mack - Gene Wilder and Jewish Humor
• Robin Pestka - Tal Brody
• Alex Silberstein - Jewish Football Players in the NFL
• Annaliese Simons - Nazi Propaganda and Deception during WWII
• Maya Zeidman - Jews in the American Revolution

• Joshua Campbell - Jews in America
• Benjamin Hartwick - Jewish Prohibition Gangsters
• Harry Pestka - The Munich Olympics
• Tristan Glazer-Swift - A Look Inside the Paperclip Project
• Sela Wyetzner - How the Toral Instructs Jews to Treat Animals

• Amy Colquist - Jewish Interfaith Families
• Sara Lougy - Golda Meir: Her Life as a Jew

Myla Wailoo - Janet Jagen: Jewish President of Guyana

• Eric Bernheimer – Judaism in Albert Einstein’s Life
• Julia DiBenedetto – Jewish Rappers
• Leah Mack – Jewish Pirates
• Noah Hartwick – Synagogue Architecture
• Rachel Schlow – Jewish Food
• Rachel Wyetzner – Firsts in the History of Jewish Women

• Diana Misrahi - Jewish Life through a Lens
• Ezra Seidel - Samuel Bak
• Jem Seidel - Jews and Jazz

• Maxx Adlerman - To Be or Not to Be: A Comparison of Two Renditions
• Ethan Cantor - Are Jews like the Luddites?
• Adam Cantor - Rabbi Joachim Prinz
• Elliott Wailoo - Albert Einstein and Zionism: His Ideas of the Middle East
• Maya Jodidio - Kibbutzim
• Michael Meyer - Jewish Food
• Madeline Schmidt - Women of Valor
• Devan Sirota - Sandy Koufax
• Alyssa Sugarman - Jewish Fashion

• Jack Perelman Camins – Jewish Treatment of Animals
• Rachel Heather Degutz - The Jewish Calendar
• Maxwell Garner - Jewish Patriots in the Revolutionary War
• Allison George - Jewish Stereotypes

• Zoe A. Sifnakis - Jewish Artists of the Twentieth Century
• Alyssa M. O'Neill - The Amazing Anne Frank
• Alec P. Cantor - Jewish Camping and its History

• Rachel Cantor
• Danielle Laurie Degutz
• Karley F. Sirota
• Jessica Weiss

• Jonathan Misrahi - American Jews in Wars

• Joshua Adlerman — Two Jewish Comedians and How They Have Affected Comedy
• Alyson Gruber — Aly's Paper of "Why"
• Joel Howard — The Gorilla in the Room
• William Meyer — The Life and Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer
• Sarah Misrahi — Jewish Women
• Laura Nutis — The Holocaust and Survivor Stories
• Sonya Rabinovich — Jews and the Olympics: From Tragedy to Triumph
• Liza Mei Stone — Being Adopted and Jewish

• Daniel Bish — The Sunflower
• Shanna Cole — Jewish Comedians
• Julia Dougherty — The Origins of Yiddish
• Rebecca George — The Art of Art Spiegelman
• Zachary Howard — Anti-Semitic Comedy and the Jews Who Write It
• Sam Lobel — Jewish Themes in Science Fiction
• Nicholas Meyer — Creationism and the Big Bang - A Jewish Interpretation
• Hannah Pawlak — Lovely Lippizaner
• Sara Pawlak — Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul
• Ilea Santiago — Angels
• Jaclyn Welsh — A Brief History of Jewish Music
• Courtney Yurecko — Betty Friedan: One Jewish Woman Who Changed the World
• Jonathan Yurecko — Discrimination & Jewish American Baseball

• Rachelle Adlerman — Jewish Music: A Journey Through Time
• Jeremy Brecher-Haimson — Tzedakah
• Joshua McGilly — Jewish Foods

• Amanda Bimstein — Jewish Forefathers: Hollywood and the Film Industry
• Ben Eisdorfer — Moses and Korakh: Leadership and Rebellion
• Irene Howard/Weitzen — Women of Valor: Righteous Women of the Holocaust
• Joe Lobel — The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
• Amy Nutis — The Star of David
• Rachel Pollard — Jewish Charity: An Oxymoron?
• Sydney Pollard — Itzhak Perlman: Violinist Extraordinaire
• Nicole Roderman — Jewish Food for Thought
• Abe Weissman — The Biblical Abraham

• Simon Liebling — Atheism and Judaism: Baruch Atah Who?
• Maxwell William Phillips — A Fire From the Flame of Hate
• Matthew A. Rubenstein — Hello Dalai: When the Jews Met the Buddhists
• David Farber Stern — Einstein and Politics
• Michael Philip Sugarman — Murder, Inc: the History of Jewish Organized Crime in America
• Chava Sharone Vietze — Jerusalem Through the Eyes of Jewish Women Poets

• Amanda Cohen — All About the Aleph Bet
• Elsie D. — The Jewish Defense League
• Shaquede Frank — The Seven Circles of Bat Mitzvah
• Camille Hutt — The Life of Klezmer Music
• Lindsay Kessler — The Three Stooges
• Morgan Reiss — Bar/Bat Mitzvahs
• Melissa Roderman — The Remarkable Life of Marc Chagall

• Hannah Bish — Hannah Senesh
• Mark Goldsmith — Chiune Sugihara: The Savior of Thousands of Jews During the Holocaust
• Jenny Mintz — The History of Modern Hebrew
• Max Mintz — What is the Good of Jewish Humor?

• Adam Benaroya — The Jewish Roots in George Gershwin’s Music
• Jesse Diener-Bennett — Klezmer: The Musical Melting Pot
• Marc Howard — German-Jewish Liturgical Music vs. Classical: Two Worlds of Music Meet
• Michelle Hutt — The Jewish Influence on Broadway
• Daniel Kent — Leonard Bernstein: Jewish Themes in His Music
• Rachel Roderman — Emma, Golda and Gloria: A Profile of Three Notable Jewish Women
• Scott Sarvetnick — An Historical Overview of the Holocaust
• Jake Weissman — The Biblical Story of Jacob
• Anna Weltman — The Party of the First Part: The Marx Brothers As Secular Jewish Humorists

• Ana Benaroya — Art and Artists of the Holocaust
• Aaron Buchman — The Israeli Conflict in Lebanon
• Michael Feldman — The Warsaw Ghetto
• Judith Meer — I. L. Peretz, the Man and His Work
• Eve Segal — Albert Einstein's Jewish Identity

• Emily Bisen-Hersh — An Analysis of Jewish Humor
• David Buchman — Ben Shahn and His Art
• Karen Hakken — The Jewish-Titanic Connection
• Jeremy Halper — A History of the Israeli Defense Forces
• Rebecca Ullman — The B'nai Mitzvot - Their Evolution and Modern Day Relevance

• Ellen Beth Goldman – The Effect of the Holocaust on My Family
• Andrea S. – Jewish Foods
• Julia Scheinbeim – Jewish Weddings
• David A. Sontag – Jewish Immigration to South America and Jewish Life in Argentina
• Nora H. Weinberg – Holocaust Poetry
• Eve E. Weissman – Reflections on Women in the Bible

• Jennie Bouwman
• Maris Callahan
• Rachel Davison
• Jessica Leventhal

The Holocaust is one of the historical periods studied by our Level 4 (7th Grade) students.  Following is a selection of poems written by our students on the subject.

The Survivors Strong Fighting for life
The Survivors beat hate beat prejudice
The Survivors overcame an army overcame discrimination
The Survivors educating the world making sure it never happens again
The Survivors there should have been more there should have been millions
The Survivors - who fought back.

By Elsie Dedecker

Trapped in the shadows --

A voice calls to me --

We have been taken away

It's very lonely -

Very silent -

Very calm -

Still

Trapped here -

In the shadows

When the voice calls to me

I call back

Having a sense of relief

That the silence has disappeared

Then I see a hand

It reaches for me --

I think my thoughts, prayers, and dreams

All came true on that very day -

I was saved --

No longer worried

About being trapped -

Down there in the shadows

By Amanda Cohen

they tortured the Jews

they tried to wipe us out

they almost did so

By Matt Rubenstein

The Holocaust was

A Horrible nightmare, a

curse lasting what seemed

like forever.

By Melissa Roderman

In the ghetto
My troubles lie…

Walls of ice
All around.
Houses of death
On Earth's ground.

What should I do
Before I die?

Showers of gas
That burn your skin.
There is no way
The Jews can win.

They've killed my mother,
and my father.

Shot guns, pistols,
Tools of war.
In these camps,
There's no out door.

My sisters and brother,
it will always bother.

By David Stern and Max Phillips

6 million is a number
Just a number
But to Jews it is more than
a number.
6 million is the number of
brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers,
sons and daughters killed with
hatred and ignorance of
human beings.

6 million can stand as many things.
But for the Jews it stands
as the innocent brothers and sisters who perished in the
Holocaust.

6 million.
Remember the 6 million not
as a number, a quantity, an
amount but as
6 million Jews.
6 million.

By Shaquede Frank

Hatred,
The one word that tears us
Apart.
The one word that kills.
The one word that starts
Wars.
The one word that killed me.
By Chava Vietze

Death
around every corner.

Darkness
in every building.

Dread
inside and out.

The stench of all things evil
Everywhere

By Simon Liebling

A flower wilts in the hot July sun
A young child sits and watches the
yellow flower die
The child has seen many losses
The child has no one
The child has nothing
Her last possession was this yellow
flower

Her identity is no more than a number
As the flower dies, the child, small and
frail, wilts
with her flower
Her nameless face closes its eyes and
lays gently
beside the flower, never to awaken again

By Lindsay Kessler

Everything was peaceful
Everything was calm
Until they came.
And made the quiet scream
And the peaceful hurt
And the good were killed
So town to town
Became awaken
To the evil
Floating around them
Not to stop
For a long time
But when they left
All was ruined
All was destroyed
All was dead and gone.
By Camille Hutt

There once was a man, a Jew.
Nazis treated him like poo.
Checked and burned,
Many stomachs churned.
Now the Holocaust is true.

By Michael Sugarman