SKA recognizes top academic achievers

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The Stella K. Abraham (SKA) High School for Girls class of 2016 named Aliza Isaacs its valedictorian; Devory Lebowitz the salutatorian and Sara Bienenstock the Keter Shem Tov Award winner.

Isaacs was a finalist in the Michlalah Ulpaniana Math competition and is a valued member of SKA’s math, debate and Model Congress teams. She received the school’s Character Award for three consecutive years, which is voted on by her peers.

A captain of the varsity basketball and hockey teams, Isaacs is a one of the head dancers in SKA’s annual production, and as a Write On for Israel representative can effectively advocate for the Jewish state in debates on complex global issues.

Chosen to go to Berlin, she took part in cultural outreach through a National Congregation of Synagogue Youth-SKA partnership. A member of the Yachad Youth Leadership Council that works to promote inclusion of special-needs individuals, Isaacs was awarded a Yachad Fellowship last year. She will study in Israel and then attend Barnard College.

Lebowitz was a first-place finished in chemistry in the Science Olympiad; a semifinalist in the Michlalah Ulpaniana Math competition and earned a bronze certificate for achievement with distinction in the Nassau County Interscholastic Mathematics League.

She placed second in the National Yeshiva University Bronka Weintraub Talmud competition, and went to Israel as part of the Jerusalem Science contest after independently studying the intersection of physics and Jewish law.

A member of the Champion JUMP Leadership team, College Bowl, Model Congress and editor-in-chief of the school’s weekly Parsha Press, Lebowitz also spent last summer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Summer Academy in Applied Science and Technology, where she was awarded the Anna Dopkin Endowed Scholarship. She also was a junior scholar at the Center for Jewish History, where she researched her family’s genealogy. Lebowitz will attend Columbia University.

Bienenstock was voted by her peers as SKA’s Keter Shem Tov Award-winner for the class of 2016. The award recognizes distinction in scholarship or community service.

She is one of a small number of students studying Advanced Placement BC calculus and served as the choir head for the school production and an ambassador for recruitment, as well as a Color War captain, blood drive coordinator, a member of SKA’s Lobbying and MACs committees and a volunteer who works with disabled individuals.

Another winner of the school’s Character Award, Bienenstock is well known on campus as person who always smiles, walks with a unique grace and consistently goes out of her way to assist her peers.