Hodaya Cohen, who was crowned this year’s International Tanach Quiz champion for youth, said she nearly gave the wrong answer to the final, decisive question before securing first place in the competition.

Speaking after her victory, Cohen described the tense moment that determined the outcome, revealing how close she came to an error. The question asked where Yaakov Avinu was born, and after several long seconds that felt like an eternity, she answered “Be’er Lachai Roi,” clinching the title.

In an interview on the program “Yatza Chag” with Liat Regev on Kan News Radio, she reflected on the moment, saying: “At that moment I didn’t process it, it took me time. I almost said a wrong answer, I almost answered Be’er Sheva.”

She went on to describe her thought process under pressure: “I simply ran through the places that were a few chapters earlier, and moved forward to that chapter, and suddenly the posuk about Be’er Lachai Roi popped into my mind, and right after that passage it speaks about the birth of Yaakov.”

Cohen is an 11th-grade student at Ulpanat Rabbi Beharan in Gedera and a resident of Moshav Nir Akiva in southern Israel. This year’s competition featured 16 participants from seven different countries and was held at the Yerushalayim Theater under the theme “To Build and to Plant.”

Akiva (Jack) Schreier, a 10th-grade student from the United States, finished as runner-up, while Yehoshua Applebaum of Israel, a student at the Berman Hebrew Academy, placed third.

{Matzav.com}