On October 20, 2024 the Union of Russian-speaking Writers of Israel (SRWI) together with the Institute of Jewish Heritage “Am haZikaron” announced an international memoir contest “The Book of Destinies: 50 Stories of Jewish Families”.
This is the first attempt to gather stories from the private lives of ordinary people into one big encyclopedia of national memory.
A professional panel of SRCPI judges selected the top 50 entries and provided literary editing of the memoirs to ensure that they reached the reader in perfect literary form.
Contest entries had to meet just three criteria:
- These should be personal stories about the author or family members, with authentic names, dates, and place names;
- The text should be limited to 5 A4 pages;
- The stories should be interesting and written in good Russian.
The results of the contest and the names of the authors of the 50 best memoirs are announced on the website of the Union of Russian-speaking Writers of Israel.
Winners will receive an award ceremony and a commemorative memoirist’s certificate, and an author’s copy of the publication when the Book of Fates is published, in the fall of 2025.
A Facebook community has been created for project participants to post and discuss their stories.