Keren Or Prose Contest Winners

By Isaac Lubin and Shira Hanovich

From Keren Or’s website: “Keren Or (Ray of Light) is a creative arts contest for teens in grades 7-12.” Entries are in three categories, poems, prose short stories and essays, and photographs. This year two Bet Shalom teens, Isaac Lubin and Shira Hanovich, won First and Third Place respectively in the Senior Division prose category! Enjoy reading their winning entries and learning a little about each of them.

I’m Isaac Lubin, a sophomore at Eden Prairie High school. I moved from Detroit, Michigan when I was five and have been living here for 11 years now. Ever since I was brought to temple as a kid I have felt like Bet Shalom is a place where I will always be welcome and safe. It introduced me to camp, which I can confidently say created some of the best memories of my life. When quarantine began I started watching movies, really any and all the good movies I could find. I loved the idea of immersing myself in a reality other than my own so much that I decided to create stories myself. In this short story I cover the feelings of those who are lost and uninspired, emotions that I have felt during this pandemic. I believe that simple imagination can be one’s greatest escape.

My name is Shira Hanovich, and I am a senior at St. Louis Park High School. I am an avid reader, a dancer, and theater techie. I entered my first Keren Or contest while in the seventh grade at Heilicher Minneapolis Jewish Day School. I’ve continued to enter work every year in the prose and poetry categories, winning or placing in each of the last five years. It’s a great opportunity for creative writing, which I enjoy. Last summer I was invited to participate in a mentor program sponsored by Rimon which pairs previous Keren Or winners with local artists, writers and photographers. I was paired with Alison Morse, a local author, and we spent the summer refining a fiction piece I had written.