What's Up With The 'White Wall?'

After primer went up on the back staircase of DJDS last year, questions about what the painting on the wall is have been floating around the school.

Upon DJDS receiving a new paint job with the brightly colored walls in 2024, the Civic Spirit Club decided to start a school beautification project for their chesed project nearly a year and a half ago.

Civic Spirit, a relatively new club at DJDS that has been in the works for a little less than two years, works to get students engaged with civics. As a part of this club, the advisor, Channa Schweid, instructed its members to find a chesed project.“The goal of the chesed project is to better the school,” said Mara Demain, the current Civic Spirit Club president. 

As a member of the club last year, Hannah Gruenwald, a junior, chose to work with juniors Eden Bichachi and Rachel Kornbluth to do a school beautification project- a mural for the staircase. “Many students have been long waiting the outcome of the new wall,” Gruenwald said. 

As of now, the wall has a sketch filled with Judaic messages and consists of Jerusalem inside of a dove and a pomegranate with seeds spilling over the city with a sunset. The pomegranate represents the 613 mitzvot. 

The mural also contains a havdalah candle, illuminating the wings of the dove. The wax from the candle will drip into a Jewish star with the school's divrei chayim around it.

This, no doubt, has excited many students. “I think it will be pretty… Hannah is a good artist,” said Mia Noy, a freshman. 

According to Gruenwald, with sketches of the wall finally done, the end is near. “I am hoping to finish the wall by the end of the year, or by the end of the first semester of my senior year,” she said. 

With the end in sight, Demain hopes that this can make a real and lasting difference to our school community. “I have hopes that it [Civic Spirit] can become an actual program that can better the school,” she said.