Attend the 74th National Jewish Book Awards Celebration
This morning, Jewish Book Council announced the winners of the 74th National Jewish Book Awards with the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan as part of the JCC’s Books That Changed My Life Festival. The National Jewish Book Awards is one of Jewish Book Council’s longest-running programs. This year JBC worked with over 120 judges who considered over 700 submissions.
Jewish Book Council’s President, Elisa Spungen Bildner, remarks, “While our National Jewish Book Award winners always reflect an important cross section of Jewish life, it’s especially meaningful that this year’s awards are going to a number of Israeli authors and books on Israel. These works offer critical opportunities for engagement, debate, and dialogue for our community — one of the most fundamental roles of literature. We are proud to uplift and support these books and bring them to new readers across the world.”
10/7: 100 Human Stories (St. Martin’s Publishing Group), by Lee Yaron, was named the Everett Family Foundation Book of the Year. 10/7 is the definitive account of the epochal attacks, as told through the stories of its victims and the communities they called home. Combining oral history with investigative journalism, the book provides a vital window into the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how internal political turmoil in Israel has affected it, offering the narratives not of politicians or the military but of the lives of everyday people who lived tenuously on the border with Gaza. Yaron profiles victims from a wide range of communities — from left-wing kibbutzniks and Burning Man-esque partiers to radical right-wingers, from Bedouins and Israeli Arabs to Nepalese guest workers, peace activists, Holocaust survivors, and refugees from Ukraine and Russia — depicting the fullness of their lives, not just their final moments. At 30, Yaron is the youngest person ever to win the Book of the Year award.
Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg wins a Lifetime Achievement Award on the occasion of the publication of his latest book, The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism (The Jewish Publication Society / University of Nebraska Press). This work, his magnum opus, is a culmination of his many decades of thinking and teaching about Jewish philosophy and theology. Rabbi Greenberg is a towering figure in Jewish life and education. His work and his teachings have impacted Jewish communities across the United States and globally, from his activism with the movement to liberate Soviet Jews to his leadership as a Modern Orthodox scholar and in the field of Holocaust education to his teachings around a philosophy that encourages a view of Judaism as a unified people.
This year, we are also pleased to present the Mentorship Award in Honor of Carolyn Starman Hessel to Aaron Lansky, the founder of the Yiddish Book Center. Aaron has fundamentally reshaped the fate of one of the great Jewish languages’ histories, and built on that to create an institution that combines deep historical research and understanding with unbridled cultural activism.
Ayelet Tsabari wins her first National Jewish Book Award, the JJ Greenberg Memorial Award for Fiction, for her novel Songs for the Brokenhearted (Random House). Yael van der Wooden wins the Goldberg Prize for Debut Fiction with her novel The Safekeep (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster), and the Miller Family Book Club Award in Memory of Helen Dunn Weinstein and June Keit Miller goes to Howard Langer for his novel The Last Dekrepitzer (Cresheim Press). The Hebrew Fiction in Translation Jane Weitzman Award goes to Maya Arad for her book The Hebrew Teacher (New Vessel Press), translated by Jessica Cohen.
The winner for the History Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award is Jonathan Marc Gribetz for Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO Effort to Know the Enemy (Princeton University Press). The award for Holocaust in Memory of Ernest W. Michel is presented to Hannah Pollin-Galay for Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish (University of Pennsylvania Press), and Samuel Kassow wins for his translation of the book Warsaw Testament, written by Rokhl Auerbach (White Goat Press), in the category of Holocaust Memoir in Memory of Dr. Charles and Ethel Weitzman.
Emmanuel Acho and Noa Tishby are the winners of the Education and Jewish Identity category in Memory of Dorothy Kripke with Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew (Simon & Schuster / Simon Element), Gila Fine wins the Contemporary Jewish Life & Practice Myra H. Kraft Memorial Award for The Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic: Rereading the Women of the Talmud (Koren Publishers Jerusalem), and Shaul Kelner wins the American Jewish Studies Celebrate 350 award for A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews (NYU Press).
Christophe Lebold is the recipient of the Biography Award in Memory of Sara Berenson Stone for his book Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw the Angels Fall (ECW Press), and Amir Tibon is awarded the The Krauss Family Award in Memory of Simon & Shulamith (Sofi) Goldberg for Autobiography & Memoir for his memoir, The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel’s Borderlands (Little, Brown & Company).
Danielle Sharkan wins the Children’s Picture Book Tracy and Larry Brown Family Award for Sharing Shalom illustrated by Selina Alko (Holiday House). A. R. Vishny receives the Young Adult Literature Award for Night Owls (HarperCollins), and the Middle Grade Literature Award goes to Finn and Ezra’s Bar Mitzvah Time Loop by Joshua S. Levy (Harper Collins).
The Jane and Stuart Weitzman Family Award for Food Writing and Cookbooks goes to Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig by Jordan D. Rosenblum (NYU Press), and Daniel Khalastchi wins the Berru Poetry Award in Memory of Ruth and Bernie Weinflash for The Story of Your Obstinate Survival (University of Wisconsin Press).
The Modern Jewish Thought and Experience Dorot Foundation Award in Memory of Joy Ungerleider is presented to Joshua Leifer for his book Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life (Penguin Random House — Dutton), and the Scholarship Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award is given to Simcha Gross for his book Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge University Press).
The Sephardic Culture Mimi S. Frank Award in Memory of Becky Levy is given to Entwined Homelands, Empowered Diasporas: Hispanic Moroccan Jews and Their Globalizing Community by Aviad Moreno (Indiana University Press), the Visual Arts award is presented to 101 Treasures from the National Library of Israel by Raquel Ukeles, Hezi Amiur, Yoel Finkelman, Stefan Litt, and Samuel Thrope (Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers). The Women’s Studies Barbara Dobkin Award is given to Holy Rebellion: Religious Feminism and the Transformation of Judaism and Women’s Rights in Israel by Ronit Irshai and Tanya Zion-Waldoks (Brandeis University Press), and the Writing Based on Archival Material The JDC-Herbert Katzki Award is presented to The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule by Paris Papamichos Chronakis (Stanford University Press).
A complete list of the 74th National Jewish Book Award winners and finalists can be found below, and additional information is available at www.JewishBookCouncil.org.
JBC’s website features a database of current and past National Jewish Book Award winners and finalists; judges’ remarks on the 74th winners and finalists will also be available after the March 2025 celebration.
The winners of the 74th National Jewish Book Awards will be honored on Wednesday, March 12, 2025 at 6:15 PM ET at an in-person ceremony in Manhattan. The host of the 74th National Jewish Book Awards will be author Dani Shapiro, the author of eleven books, including two National Jewish Book Award winners, Signal Fires and Inheritance.
This year’s co-chairs for the National Jewish Book Award Celebration, Joy Greenberg, Co-President of JBC, and Linda Sterling, a member of JBC’s Board of Directors, note that, “Each year, the event celebrates not only the achievements of our winners, but also the overall work and mission of Jewish Book Council. Now more than ever, we need to demonstrate that we are unified and committed in our support for Jewish books, authors, and ideas, and this event is an opportunity to showcase that support and bring our whole literary ecosystem together.”
Tickets for Jewish Book Council’s celebration for the 74th winners of the National Jewish Book Awards can be purchased here.
If you are a member of the press and would like to attend this year’s celebration event, please email Evie at evie@jewishbooks.org.
About Jewish Book Council: Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating, enriching, and strengthening the community through Jewish literature. Each year, JBC reaches over 700,000 readers with its vibrant digital presence, in addition to working with nearly 300 touring authors each year, creating resources for over 3,000 book clubs, facilitating over 1,400 events, presenting the National Jewish Book Awards and Natan Notable Books, co-hosting the popular literary series Unpacking the Book: Jewish Writers in Conversation, and publishing its annual print publication, Paper Brigade. JBC ensures that the authors of Jewish-interest books have a platform, and that readers are able to find these books and have the tools to discuss them with their communities.
About the National Jewish Book Awards: The National Jewish Book Awards were established by Jewish Book Council in 1950 in order to recognize outstanding works of Jewish literature. They are the oldest awards of their kind.
Jewish Book of the Year
Everett Family Foundation Award
Winner:
Lee Yaron
St. Martin’s Publishing Group
Lifetime Achievement Award
The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism
Rabbi Irving Greenberg
Jewish Publication Society / University of Nebraska Press
Mentorship Award in Honor of Carolyn Starman Hessel
Aaron Lansky
American Jewish Studies
Celebrate 350 Award
Winner:
A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews
Shaul Kelner
NYU Press
Finalists:
Write like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals
Ronnie Grinberg
Princeton University Press
Autobiography and Memoir
The Krauss Family Award in Memory of Simon & Shulamith (Sofi) Goldberg
Winner:
The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel’s Borderlands
Amir Tibon
Little, Brown & Company
Finalists:
Shalom Auslander
Penguin Random House, Riverhead Books
Karen Kirsten
Kensington Publishing Corp.
Bad Jew: A Family’s Quest from the Minsk Ghetto to Netanyahu’s Israel
Piotr Smolar
Other Press
Biography
In Memory of Sara Berenson Stone
Winner:
Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw the Angels Fall
Christophe Lebold
ECW Press
Finalists:
Jehuda Reinharz and Motti Golani
Brandeis University Press
Book Club
The Miller Family Award in Memory of Helen Dunn Weinstein and June Keit Miller
Winner:
Howard Langer
Cresheim Press
Finalists:
Talia Carner
HarperCollins Publishers
Lihi Lapid; Sondra Silverston, trans.
HarperCollins Publishers
Children’s Picture Book
Tracy and Larry Brown Family Award
Winner:
Danielle Sharkan, Selina Alko, illus.
Holiday House
Finalists:
Emily Amrousi
Koren Publishers
The Blue Butterfly of Cochin
Ariana Mizrahi
Kalaniot Books
The Many Problems of Rochel-Leah
Jane Yolen
Apples & Honey Press, an imprint of Behrman House
Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice
Myra H. Kraft Memorial Award
Winner:
The Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic: Rereading the Women of the Talmud
Gila Fine
Koren Publishers Jerusalem
Finalists:
One Day in October: Forty Heroes, Forty Stories
Oriya Mevorah and Yair Agmon
Koren Publishers
The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World
Sharon Brous
TarcherPerigee (Penguin Random House)
Debut Fiction
Goldberg Prize
Winner:
Yael van der Wouden
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Finalists:
Allison Alsup
Turner Publishing Company
Toby Lloyd
Simon & Schuster / Avid Reader Press
Education & Jewish Identity
In Memory of Dorothy Kripke
Winner:
Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew
Emmanuel Acho and Noa Tishby
Simon & Schuster / Simon Element
Finalists:
Saying No to Hate: Overcoming Antisemitism in America
Norman H. Finkelstein
Jewish Publication Society / University of Nebraska Press
Stand-Up Nation: Israeli Resilience in the Wake of Disaster
Aviva Klompas
Wicked Son, an imprint of Post Hill Press
Fiction
JJ Greenberg Memorial Award
Winner:
Ayelet Tsabari
Random House
Finalists:
Joan Leegant
New American Press
Toby Lloyd
Simon & Schuster / Avid Reader Press
Food Writing & Cookbooks
Jane and Stuart Weitzman Family Award
Winner:
Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig
Jordan D. Rosenblum
NYU Press
Finalist:
Naama Shefi and the Jewish Food Society
Artisan Books
Sabor Judío: The Jewish Mexican Cookbook
Ilan Stavans and Margaret E. Boyle
Ferris & Ferris Books (an imprint of the University of North Carolina Press)
Hebrew Fiction in Translation
Jane Weitzman Award
Winner:
Maya Arad; Jessica Cohen, trans.
New Vessel Press
Finalists:
Lihi Lapid; Sondra Silverston, trans.
HarperCollins Publishers
History
Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award
Winner:
Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO Effort to Know the Enemy
Jonathan Marc Gribetz
Princeton University Press
Finalists:
Israel’s Black Panthers: The Radicals Who Punctured a Nation’s Founding Myth
Asaf Elia-Shalev
University of California Press
Chris Heath
Schocken
Holocaust
In Memory of Ernest W. Michel
Winner:
Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish
Hannah Pollin-Galay
University of Pennsylvania Press
Finalists:
Between the Wires: The Janowska Camp and the Holocaust in Lviv
Waitman Wade Beorn
University of Nebraska Press
Final Verdict: The Holocaust on Trial in the 21st Century
Tobias Buck
Hachette Book Group / Hachette Books
Holocaust Memoir
in Memory of Dr. Charles and Ethel Weitzman
Winner:
Rokhl Auerbach; Samuel Kassow, trans.
White Goat Press
Finalists:
Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz
József Debreczeni; Paul Olchváry, trans.
St. Martin’s Press
Hiding in Holland: A Resistance Memoir
Shulamit Reinharz
Amsterdam Publishers
Middle Grade Literature
Winner:
Finn and Ezra’s Bar Mitzvah Time Loop
Joshua S. Levy
HarperCollins
Finalists:
Terry LaBan
Holiday House
Benji Zeb Is a Ravenous Werewolf
Deke Moulton
Tundra Books
Modern Jewish Thought and Experience
Dorot Foundation Award in Memory of Joy Ungerleider
Winner:
Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life
Joshua Leifer
Penguin Random House — Dutton
Finalists:
To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People
Noah Feldman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Shai Held
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Poetry
Berru Award in Memory of Ruth and Bernie Weinflash
Winner:
The Story of Your Obstinate Survival
Daniel Khalastchi
University of Wisconsin Press
Finalists:
Andrea Cohen
Four Way Books
Chanda Feldman
LSU Press
Self Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire
Jason Schneiderman
Red Hen Press
Scholarship
Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award
Winner:
Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity
Simcha Gross
Cambridge University Press
Finalists:
Between the Bridge and the Barricade: Jewish Translation in Early Modern Europe
Iris Idelson-Shein
University of Pennsylvania Press
Sephardic Culture
Mimi S. Frank Award in Memory of Becky Levy
Winner:
Aviad Moreno
Indiana University Press
Finalist:
Frances Malino and Yaelle Azagury; Blanche Bendahan
Brandeis University Press
Visual Arts
Winner:
101 Treasures from the National Library of Israel
Raquel Ukeles, Hezi Amiur, Yoel Finkelman, Stefan Litt, and Samuel Thrope
Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers
Finalists:
Books Like Sapphires: From the Library of Congress Judaica Collection
Ann Brener
Brandeis University Press
The Beauty of the Hebrew Letter: From Sacred Scrolls to Graffiti
Izzy Pludwinski
Brandeis University Press
Josh Tuininga
Abrams
Women’s Studies
Barbara Dobkin Award
Winner:
Ronit Irshai and Tanya Zion-Waldoks
Brandeis University Press
Finalist:
Matrilineal Dissent: Women Writers and Jewish American Literary History
Annie Atura Bushnell, Lori Harrison-Kahan and Ashley Walters
Wayne State University Press
Write like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals
Ronnie Grinberg
Princeton University Press
Writing Based on Archival Material
The JDC-Herbert Katzki Award
Winner:
The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule
Paris Papamichos Chronakis
Stanford University Press
Finalist:
A Nation of Refugees: Russia’s Jews in World War I
Polly Zavadivker
Oxford University Press
Young Adult Literature
Winner:
A.R. Vishny
HarperCollins
Finalists:
Isaac Blum
Penguin Young Readers
Becoming Janet: Finding Myself in the Holocaust
Janet Singer Applefield
Cypress House
Related Reading
