Remarks from Michael W. Twit­ty, Dani Shapiro, Maayan Eitan, Ellen Frankel, Michael Frank, and Shoshana Nam­bi for the 72nd Nation­al Jew­ish Book Awards Cel­e­bra­tion on March 1st, 2023

Michael W. Twitty

The Cook­ing Gene was about repair­ing a fam­i­ly tree. Kosher­soul cen­tered around repair­ing a mosa­ic an ancient mosa­ic as old as Moshe and Tzip­po­rah and as new as Drake and Tiffany Haddish.

We Jews and Black folks, in Venn Dia­gram togeth­er and apart rep­re­sent the test of the promise of Amer­i­ca, the Amer­i­ca’s as a place of free­dom. Along with the ongo­ing saga of indige­nous peo­ples and waves of immi­grants look­ing for sal­va­tion beyond the sys­tems of upheaval. We have fought togeth­er and apart we have made com­mu­ni­ty and had con­flict and we have become fam­i­ly in unlike­ly places in defi­ance of the West­’s orig­i­nal sins of anti­semitism and anti-Blackness.

Despite the accu­sa­tions and libels we are not imposters we are wit­ness­es, we are agents of moral sua­sion and social justice…we are not ene­mies we are heal­ers, strivers and pil­grims. We are a chal­lenge to the lie the human is not a world, and that the world is only as good as its end. And we are vis­i­ble. And Black and Jew­ish lives mat­ter. We will always defy erasure.

Thank you for this award. I stand here with Dr. Mar­cie Cohen Fer­ris, Rab­bi Gil Marks of blessed mem­o­ry, Joan Nathan Faye Levy and Clau­dia Roden. This bless­ing and oppor­tu­ni­ty is frankly my own cor­ner of both Black his­to­ry and Jew­ish his­to­ry. You have no idea how I nev­er dreamed my lot in life would be mak­ing the thing I love the most…history.

To my Ances­tors and the tzad­dikim who walked before us, 

Lo Ahavti Dai

Toda Raba.

Dani Shapiro

What makes a nov­el a Jew­ish nov­el? Does it need to be writ­ten by a Jew? Or have a rab­bi as its pro­tag­o­nist, or a can­tor, or maybe a psy­cho­an­a­lyst? Does it need to be set in Israel, or wartime France – or Scarsdale?

The late great David Fos­ter Wal­lace once shared this para­ble: two young fish are swim­ming along when they cross paths with an old­er fish. The old­er fish calls out: ​“Hey guys! How’s the water?” and then swims on. A few moments lat­er, one of the young fish turns to the oth­er and asks: ​“What’s water?”

To me, as a human being and as a nov­el­ist, Jew­ish­ness is the water I swim in. It is as insep­a­ra­ble from me as the oth­er deep­est aspects of my iden­ti­ty: wife, moth­er, daugh­ter, friend, writer. And a Jew­ish nov­el is one that is suf­fused with Jew­ish­ness to its core, which can mean many things. When Sig­nal Fires first came out, I received an annoyed note from a read­er, who asked why I was rep­re­sent­ing Jew­ish fam­i­lies who ate non-kosher food, or drove on Shabbos.

I thought about this ques­tion a lot. Was I mis­rep­re­sent­ing my Jew­ish char­ac­ters – or was I rep­re­sent­ing, in Sig­nal Fires, a slice of Jew­ish life in Amer­i­ca – an Amer­i­ca in which Jews have been able to ask: what is water?

We’re liv­ing now in a time when we can­not afford not to know the water we’re swim­ming in, or to ignore the real­i­ties and exi­gen­cies of being Jews today – and I want­ed to write a nov­el in which my char­ac­ters are indeli­bly Jew­ish, in their ges­tures, their dia­logue, their mem­o­ries, their choic­es, to the point where it is sim­ply unspo­ken fact. Sarah has a mem­o­ry of Noah Kantrowitz throw­ing up in the neighbor’s aza­lea bush after his bar mitz­vah. Peter refers to a trip to Trad­er Joe’s in Los Ange­les on New Year’s Eve of 1999 as ​“Erev Armaged­don.” And of course, there’s the guilt, the wor­ry, the parental love, the grief, the shame these fam­i­lies face as they live their lives, Jew­ish to their core, per­haps for this rea­son most of all: they nev­er stop ask­ing ques­tions. They’re liv­ing their lives, yes, their mod­ern, assim­i­lat­ed lives, but if asked, they know exact­ly what water is. Like starme, it would be the first thing they’d say when asked to define themselves.

In clos­ing, I’m deeply hon­ored to be receiv­ing the JJ Green­berg Memo­r­i­al Award in Fic­tion, and very grate­ful to the JBC. If it’s true, what the char­ac­ter Wal­do says in my nov­el, that noth­ing ever real­ly tru­ly van­ish­es, then per­haps my dad is here at this moment, and if he is, I know he is kvelling.

Maayan Eitan

I start­ed writ­ing Love a decade ago, and it was pub­lished, in Hebrew, almost three years ago to this day. There is some­thing anachro­nis­tic – com­plete­ly mis­placed in time – in speak­ing, tonight, about a book that, at least for me, belongs so much in the past. And yet per­haps it would only be pos­si­ble to speak about a book titled ​“love” anachro­nis­ti­cal­ly. ​“The expe­ri­ence of eros”, we’re told by Anne Car­son, ​“is a study in the ambi­gu­i­ties of time”. ​“The lover’s real desire”, Car­son con­tin­ues, ​“is to elude the cer­tain­ties of physics and float in the ambi­gu­i­ties of a space-time where absent is present and ​‘now’ can include ​‘then’ with­out ceas­ing to be ​‘now’”.

And so I would like to men­tion, tonight, not only the ambi­gu­i­ties of that amorous ​“space-time where absent is present”, but also the always already ambigu­ous meet­ing-place of lan­guages, in my case Hebrew and Eng­lish, and the ambi­gu­i­ties of trans­la­tion. I trans­lat­ed Love on a whim, nev­er imag­in­ing that it would trav­el this far; and I would like to thank the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and the judges for the Jane Weitz­man Award for Hebrew Fic­tion in Trans­la­tion for help­ing it elude some of the cer­tain­ties of lit­er­ary mar­kets and of my own lim­it­ed imag­i­na­tion. Thank you for mak­ing my book present. I hope that I man­aged to make the Eng­lish trans­la­tion some­how include its Hebrew ori­gin, with­out ceas­ing to be English.

I came to New York a few days ago from Tel Aviv, where I have lived for the past eight years. For any­one wish­ing to hold to demo­c­ra­t­ic and human­is­tic val­ues, Israel is a chal­leng­ing place to live in today – per­haps it always had been. I don’t know whether lit­er­a­ture can influ­ence pol­i­tics, or how. Yet I would still like to believe in the intrin­sic pow­er of lit­er­a­ture and writ­ing as such. Thus I’d like to con­clude my remarks tonight with a quote by George Stein­er. “[W]hen the text is the home­land”, Stein­er wrote, ​“even when it is root­ed only in the exact remem­brance and seek­ing of a hand­ful of wan­der­ers, nomads of the word, it can­not be extin­guished. Time is truth’s pass­port”, Stein­er adds, ​“and its native ground. What bet­ter lodg­ing for the Jew?”

Thank you.

Ellen Frankel

Men­tor­ing is a rec­i­p­ro­cal process, as much about receiv­ing as giv­ing. The Tal­mud teach­es:Har­bay lama­di­ti me’rabotai u‑m’haverai yotair m’rabotai, u‑m’talmidai yotair meku­lam. ​“I have learned much from my teach­ers, more from my study com­pan­ions, and from my stu­dents, most of all.”

In my eigh­teen years at the helm of The Jew­ish Pub­li­ca­tion Soci­ety, I had the priv­i­lege and joy of men­tor­ing hun­dreds of writ­ers, many of them first-time authors like Avi­vah Zorn­berg; dozens of staff, board trustees, JPS interns like Miri Pomer­antz Dauber and Nao­mi Fire­stone-Teeter, pro­fes­sion­al col­leagues, and schol­ar­ly advi­sors. And I learned from them all. Tonight I’d like to sin­gle out four of my own mentors.

Dr. Chaim Potok, z”l, occu­pied my chair as edi­tor-in-chief twen­ty-five years before me. He taught me the rig­ors of respon­si­ble cura­tion and the bold­ness of respon­si­ble risk-tak­ing. Banker Bet­sy Cohen, board Trustee, extra­or­di­nary donor, and finan­cial genius, taught me how to have a hard head, a soft voice, a strate­gic eye, and dar­ing ambi­tion in fundrais­ing. Rab­bi Gene Borowitz, z”l, taught me how to com­bine a gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it with uncom­pro­mis­ing integri­ty, and also how to make space for younger schol­ars and authors. And Jane Isay, who is here with me tonight, a bril­liant trade edi­tor and pub­lish­er, and a wise friend, taught me the busi­ness. She also pro­vid­ed unstint­ing moral sup­port when the going got tough.

When I start­ed my job, I com­mis­sion a cal­ligraphed piece of art from an artist friend. It’s a quo­ta­tion from Pirke Avot: Eizeh hu m’hubad? Ha‑m’habaid et ha-bri’ot. ​“Who is wor­thy of hon­or? The one who hon­ors oth­ers.” I tried to prac­tice this teach­ing with every­one I met. And lest I for­get, the dour por­trait of Hen­ri­et­ta Szold, JPS’s first edi­tor, hung across from me on the wall, star­ing with rab­binic gravitas.

I want to thank the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil for this spe­cial hon­or, named after one of the great men­tors in our field, Car­olyn Star­man Hes­sel. I am grate­ful that I’ve had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to men­tor so many oth­ers in my pub­lish­ing career. But to para­phrase the Rab­bis: u‑m’talmidai yotair meku­lam. From those I have men­tored, I have learned most of all.

Thank you.

Michael Frank

Stel­la Levi’s gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it ani­mates every page of One Hun­dred Sat­ur­days. Over a span of more than six years Stel­la opened up to me, chal­lenged me, pro­voked me, cor­rect­ed me, encour­aged me, and — by the end — changed me. My expe­ri­ence with Stel­la devel­oped me as a lis­ten­er; it helped me learn patience; it taught me sev­er­al things about myself. 

It also showed me that a book can take many forms. What I had with Stel­la — and what I sought to have in turn with the read­er — was an encounter: an encounter with the past, an encounter with a fas­ci­nat­ing lost world, an encounter with a mod­ern-day Scheherazade. 

In try­ing to under­stand what this encounter meant, I was helped by Wal­ter Benjamin’s 1936 essay ​“The Sto­ry­teller,” where he observes that ​“telling sto­ries is the art of retelling those we have heard.” Telling as retelling: after my six years with Stel­la, this res­onat­ed with me, and pro­found­ly. ​“In this way,” Ben­jamin goes on to say, ​“the web is woven in which the gift of sto­ry­telling is embedded.” 

Weav­ing that web, offer­ing and receiv­ing the gift of sto­ry­telling, is not lim­it­ed to one book, or a sin­gle cor­ner of the web. Ben­jamin refers at one point to the ​“fun­da­men­tal role” that sto­ry­telling has played in ​“humanity’s house­hold” — what a beau­ti­ful phrase! All of the books being rec­og­nized this evening have con­tributed, each in its own way, to humanity’s house­hold, and One Hun­dred Sat­ur­days is for­tu­nate to be among them. 

Shoshana Nam­bi

Shoshi grew up with her grand­par­ents, who loved her and told her sto­ries. They would take turns telling her and her broth­ers folk sto­ries about lions and hye­nas, fire­wood gath­er­ers in deep forests who helped a lost boy get back to his fam­i­ly, and the bird with the most beau­ti­ful voice that sang and woke up the entire vil­lage. They used every oppor­tu­ni­ty to make up sto­ries with moral teach­ing, usu­al­ly about work­ing hard, respect­ing elders, and being kind to each other. 

In a world of 100 kids per class­room, the teacher hold­ing one book that every­one would share, I loved com­ing back home to hear sto­ries close to me. Sto­ries that I could touch and inter­act with, sto­ries that my grand­pa told humorously.

Sto­ries touch our hearts, and I’m so glad that The Very Best Sukkah: A Sto­ry from Ugan­da, beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed by Moran Yegev, res­onates with Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties and fam­i­lies around the world. Because it’s a sto­ry of joy, com­mu­ni­ty, and kindness. 

I’m very grate­ful to Kalan­iot books, my pub­lish­er, for giv­ing me a plat­form to con­tin­ue my grandparent’s sto­ry­telling, to write the sto­ry of my child­hood mem­o­ry, the joyul ways that my com­mu­ni­ty, the Abayu­daya Jews of Ugan­da cel­e­brate the hol­i­day of Sukkot and we take care of each oth­er. And to remind all of us that we all win when we work together.

I was raised and con­tin­ue to be sup­port­ed and men­tored by a village.

For this mile­stone, I like to thank my friend and fam­i­ly, Hedy Cohen, for mak­ing me feel smart and feel that I have some­thing to con­tribute to our world.

To my friend Mar­lene Bocast for send­ing books to read in my teenage years.

To my friend and men­tor Har­ri­et Bograd, who passed away last year, she loved to hear sto­ries of Jews around the world and she was always so proud women’s accomplish. 

To my amaz­ing daugh­ter, Emu­nah, for adding so much Joy to my life.

To Hebrew Union Col­lege and Con­gre­ga­tion Rodeph Sholom in NYC for allow­ing me to learn and grow as a future rabbi.

Final­ly, thank you so much to the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and to the Tra­cy and Lar­ry Fam­i­ly Award for the recog­ni­tion of this incred­i­ble award and for ampli­fy­ing Shoshi’s sto­ry even wider. Thank you!