Announcing the Winners of the 2024 Hanukkiah and Sevivon Competition

Bezalel’s sixth annual Hanukkiah and Sevivon Competition, a donation of Raanan and Nicole Agos, drew dozens of entrants. This year’s winners are:

First place: Danna Bernhard, fourth-year student, Department of Industrial Design

From the selection committee’s reasons: “The winning sevivon embodies one of life’s the deepest and most complex ideas—the essence of the home. Through simple design and deep thinking, the creator succeeded in capturing the duality that characterizes the concept of ‘home’ in our time: stability alongside change, permanence alongside movement. In the wake of October 7th, our collective visual memory absorbed several more images. Sadly, a small house with a red roof and chimney is no longer a naive image, but carries also a hint of disaster. In a precise and poignant work, the creator deals with this by placing this image back within the comforting realm of childlike play. The unique mechanism she developed emphasizes that despite constant movement, there is always a point of balance we return to—the home. The beauty of this work lies in its ability to take a familiar and trivial object and transform it into a profound metaphor for life itself.”

Two projects—a Hanukkiah and a Sevivon—share second place.

Netta Urieli, 4th-year student, Department of Industrial Design

From the selection committee’s reasons: “In a courageous and intelligent strategy, the designer chose to leave only the bare minimum in this hanukkiah: a half-moon of brass with nine holders. The precise use of brass references the traditional hanukkiah, and its overall form corresponds with the traditional branched menorah. The work’s uniqueness lies in the way it provides a platform for the candles themselves. The distinctive arrangement of the candles creates a fascinating visual effect—when the menorah is in use, the flickering light creates a festive and attractive display. Each candle intensifies the light of its neighbor, collectively creating an innovative and spectacular light show.”

Michal Harda, Lecturer in the Department of Ceramics and Glass Design

From the selection committee’s reasons: “The glass sevivon embodies a rare harmony between creative process and finished product. Metaphorical rotation and physical movement come together in an elegant, precious and desirable object whose essence is rotation. The sevivon’s dynamic shape echoes the skillful movement employed in its making. The creative process itself becomes an inseparable part of the metaphor: the uniform rotation of the molten glass around its central axis reflects the movement of the spinning top itself. The tension between liquid and solid, hot and cold, movement and stillness, creates a fascinating narrative of materialization and crystallization. The optical quality of the glass produces play and movement even when motionless, the play of light and transparency bestows a dreamlike quality to the traditional object, and perhaps even glimmerings of hope, through its ability to illuminate and reflect light.”

Third place: Anat Golan, graduate of the Department of Jewelry and Fashion and the Master’s Program in Industrial Design

From the selection committee’s reasons: “The hanukkiah offers a refreshing interpretation of the definition of a ceremonial object. The work, which combines advanced processing technologies with precise manual assembly, challenges the traditional perception of the Hanukkah menorah and Sabbath candlesticks as static objects. This hanukkiah is a captivating tribute to an object of nostalgic quality and evokes thoughts about the practicality integral to the Judaica object, which combines utility with ceremonial function. The beauty of this work lies in the deep understanding that the Hanukkah menorah and Sabbath candlesticks are not merely objects, but also stimuli. They are a meeting point for gathering family and friends around light and flame, creating a shared moment in time and space. The transition between closed object and open creates an intriguing, festive and playful user experience that makes us want to handle it.”

Audience Favorite Prize: Oriya Ben David, first year, Department of Visual Communication

Judges: Nitsan Debbi, Shelly Satat-Kombor and Shira Keret.