Three Local Students Win Top Honors in Jewish Lens Competition

Three Miami-Dade County middle- and high-school students just launched the Jewish New Year by taking the three top honors in a nationwide “Rosh Hashanah Student Photography Contest.” Aptly themed, “New Beginnings,” the contest was sponsored by The Jewish Lens, an international educational program that integrates photography with Jewish curricula. Introduced this year to eight Miami area Jewish schools and programs, The Jewish Lens is made possible through a supplementary gift to the Greater Miami Jewish Federation.

The photography contest, which was open to all students in grades 5-12 across the U.S., saw a number of entries from South Florida youth and teens. Capturing the First-Place Prize was Michal Paniry, an eighth-grader from Miami who attends the Samuel Scheck Hillel Community Day School; Second-Place Prize went to Adir Levy, a ninth-grade student from Miami who is also a student at Hillel; and Blake Egozi, an 11th-grade student from Golden Beach who attends University School of NSU, won the Third-Place Prize.

Click here to see the winning photographs.

The Jewish Lens program allows teenagers to use photography to find themselves in their own culture and in relation to the Jewish people. Through special funding, the program is being introduced this year to Miami by Federation and the Center for Advancement of Jewish Education. The program will culminate in an end-of-year exhibition of student work. It is being offered to middle- and high-school students in eight Miami-Dade Jewish schools and programs, along with two schools in Miami’s partnership city of Yerucham in Israel’s Negev region.

This year, The Jewish Lens program will benefit seniors at Ben Lipson Hillel Community High School, middle school students at Hochberg Preparatory School and Temple Beth Sholom Youth Program, sixth-grade religious school students at Temple Judea and Temple Beth Am, eighth- and ninth-grade religious school students at Bet Breira Samu-El Or Olom, students in grades 6-8 at Chabad Chayil Hebrew After-School Program and ninth-grade students of the Michael-Ann Russell JCC’s Hebraica Maccabi Tzair Youth Program.

For more information, call Ellen Goldberg at 786.866.8497 or email egoldberg@gmjf.org.