Hundreds of scholars from 31 nations took half in My Household Story this yr, the worldwide heritage program run by ANU – Museum of the Jewish Individuals in Tel Aviv, whose 2026 winners had been just lately introduced in a world on-line ceremony broadcast from Israel to 6 continents.
The Manuel Hirsch Grosskopf Worldwide Competitors is now in its thirty first yr.
The closing occasion, held on Zoom from the museum, included college students, academics, and relations from all over the world, with the ceremony performed in English and accompanied by dwell translation into Hebrew, Russian, French, and Spanish. Arkia sponsored the occasion and donated airline tickets for the winners and their households.
My Household Story is the flagship program of the Koret Worldwide Faculty for Jewish Peoplehood Research, ANU’s academic division. The venture was created and is led by Martha Mazo, who has headed Spanish-language academic packages at ANU for 31 years.
This system highlights numerous Jewish household histories
This system invitations younger individuals in Israel and overseas to analysis their household histories, doc their heritage, and remodel their roots tasks into artistic, museum-style displays. Along with faculties, this system contains Jewish museums worldwide, summer time camps, casual training frameworks, and households.
This yr, tons of of scholars submitted works exploring household tales, identification, reminiscence, migration, heritage, and neighborhood. The entries had been judged by a global panel led by ANU.
Oded Revivi, CEO of ANU – Museum of the Jewish Individuals, stated this system provides younger individuals a uncommon alternative to attach private reminiscence with Jewish historical past.
“In a quickly altering world, the power to pause for a second, hearken to the tales that formed us and join previous, current, and future is a unprecedented academic and ethical reward,” he stated.
“My Household Story provides younger individuals the chance to find the roots from which they grew and to know how their private story matches into the broad mosaic of the Jewish individuals. The truth that tons of of scholars from 31 totally different nations participate within the venture yearly illustrates the facility of the household story to attach individuals, communities, and cultures.”
Naama Keller, director of the Koret Worldwide Faculty at ANU, stated, “Within the My Household Story program, youngsters uncover that they aren’t solely heirs to the previous, but in addition creators of the long run. By means of their household tales, they turn out to be the subsequent hyperlink within the persevering with chain of the story of the Jewish individuals.”
The successful tasks might be displayed within the competitors’s worldwide digital archive and within the interactive set up dedicated to the venture at ANU – Museum of the Jewish Individuals, changing into a part of a rising assortment of hundreds of household tales gathered from throughout the Jewish world.
Meet the first-place winners
The primary-place winner in Hebrew is Alex Alush of A.D. Gordon Faculty in Givatayim for “The Album That By no means Was.” The venture tells the story of Alush’s great-grandmother, Gita, born in Belarus in 1933, who, on the age of 10, was pressured to flee the ghetto alone and conceal within the forest, abandoning her household and each hint of her previous. Due to the conflict, the primary {photograph} of her was taken when she was 13, in an orphanage.
Utilizing synthetic intelligence (AI), Alush recreated misplaced moments from Gita’s childhood, from her heat household house to her dramatic escape, turning tales handed down by means of the generations into tangible pictures. The venture sought to offer Gita again the childhood reminiscences that had been stolen from her.
Sarah Sitton Massri of Or HaHayim Faculty in Mexico Metropolis gained first place in Spanish for “SHOCK/SHUK,” a sensory venture about her Syrian Jewish household’s heritage as retailers. The work combines smells, textures, colours, and tastes to mirror the “taste” of her household and cultural identification. Two lamps bearing household names symbolize the sunshine she has acquired from previous generations and the sunshine she passes on to the long run.
Daniel Voloshchuk of the Shalom Training Middle in Rockville, Maryland, gained in Russian for a home made venture using the visible language of household albums and reminiscence books. His analysis explored the gaps, silences, and omissions that usually exist in Jewish household archives, particularly within the wake of the tragedies of the twentieth century. The judges praised the venture’s heat, authenticity, and use of handmade components, together with aged paper and handwritten Russian.
Aaron Lévy of École Marianne Picard in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, gained first place in French for a board sport known as “Our Roots Journey.” Born in France and dwelling in Paris, Lévy comes from a household with roots in Tunisia on his mom’s aspect and Morocco on his father’s aspect. He interviewed his mother and father and all 4 grandparents, making a sport by which gamers transfer by means of household historical past by answering questions, following clues, and finishing challenges. The sport is housed in an outdated suitcase, symbolizing the journeys and displacements his household skilled over time.
Zoe Sharf of Mount Scopus Memorial School in Melbourne, Australia, gained first place in English and within the common worldwide class. Her venture explores how a legacy of giving passes from technology to technology and shapes private identification.
On the heart of her work is a novel tzedakah field manufactured from clear acrylic and engraved copper cash. Every coin contains faces, paperwork, and household values, representing lives of which means and contribution. Sharf was impressed by her great-grandmother, who survived a labor camp in Siberia throughout World Struggle II and cared for her youthful brother, in addition to by later generations of family members who continued the household custom of giving, together with medical doctors and volunteers.
Sharf stated the artistic course of taught her that, simply as a tzedakah field fills regularly, identification is constructed step-by-step, coin-by-coin, and value-by-value, as a part of a protracted chain of compassion, braveness, and mutual duty linking her household story to the bigger story of the Jewish individuals.
