Winners Announced for the 2025 Hanukkiah and Sevivon Competition
Bezalel’s Hanukkiah and Sevivon Competition, supported by Raanan and Nicole Agus and in collaboration with the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, was held for the seventh year. Among the dozens of contestants, this year’s winners are:
First place and winner of the Audience Favorite Award: Manou Klein and Ido Erez, Third-Year Students, Polonsky Department of Industrial Design
Among the considerations cited by the jury: ״This work was awarded first place for its ability to transform an object associated with control and separation into a source of light and connection through a sharp and precise design gesture. Ordinarily used for marking boundaries, enforcing obstruction and regulating movement, the security bollard is a nearly inseparable and almost transparent component of the Israeli urban landscape. Recognizing this element’s underlying structural potential, the designers employed a single minimal cut to reimagine the bollard as a light-bearing stem.
This restrained intervention in a familiar ready-made produces a powerful reversal of meaning. An object designed to channel and restrict crowds becomes a site of gathering and illumination, casting light onto the darkened street while articulating a renewed vision of public space. The hanukkiah not only illuminates the holiday; it also “illuminates” the barrier itself, rendering visible what has become transparent and proposing an alternative vision of hope within a tense reality.״
Second place: Neil Cohen, Lecturer, Department of Visual Communication, and Ori Shifrin Anavy
Among the considerations cited by the jury: ״This work engages with a familiar and everyday Israeli icon—the standard Shabbat candle box—and subjects it to a formal and programmatic transformation. The altered proportions function as a visual trigger prompting the viewer to pause and reconsider the object. Closer inspection reveals the gap between the familiar graphic envelope and the newly introduced details: scenes of domestic routine have been replaced by images of combat, and the accompanying texts have been revised in ways that register existential anxiety within the domestic ritual.
The jury also commended the successful translation of the object from a biodegradable material (cardboard) into high-finish ceramic medium as well as the way the work invites the viewer into a game of ‘spot the differences.’ The encounter culminates in a new and unsettled engagement with the ritual itself. Through this process, the object generates a clever dissonance between nostalgic memory and the complexities of the current reality.״
Third place: Adi Kafri-Mor, second-year student, The Master’s Program in Industrial Design (M.Des.)
Among the considerations cited by the jury: “The work impressed the jury through its inventive interpretation of the concept of the ‘miracle.’ Rather than relying solely on the traditional letters engraved on the sides of the sevivon, the designer proposes a tangible and dynamic conception of miracle: through mechanical rotation, inert material is set into motion, evoking the natural process of flowering. A poetic yet precise correspondence emerges between Jewish temporal cycles and the seasonal rhythms of the Land of Israel. Hanukkah, a festival that marks the persistence of light during dark and cold evenings, coincides with the earth’s gradual awakening and the first stirrings of the flowering cycle. Shaped as an anemone or anthemis, the sevivon captures this transitional moment and translates it into a playful, kinetic object.
From a design perspective, the work sustains a productive tension between technological means—3D printing, hinges, and centrifugal force—and a delicate botanical aesthetic. The opening mechanism functions not as a decorative gimmick, but as a conceptual tool, articulating themes of emergence from stasis and of latent beauty revealed in its proper time. In this sense, the work offers a resonant reflection on growth and renewal within the current Israeli reality.”
