Natan and Jew­ish Book Coun­cil are thrilled to announce the Win­ter 2025 Natan Notable Book: 10/7: 100 Human Sto­ries by Lee Yaron (St. Martin’s Press, 2024). 

Twice a year, Natan Notable Books rec­og­nizes recent­ly pub­lished or about-to-be-pub­lished non-fic­tion books that promise to cat­alyze con­ver­sa­tions aligned with the themes of Natan’s grant­mak­ing: rein­vent­ing Jew­ish life and com­mu­ni­ty for the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, shift­ing notions of indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive Jew­ish iden­ti­ty, the his­to­ry and future of Israel, under­stand­ing and con­fronting con­tem­po­rary forms of anti­semitism, and the evolv­ing rela­tion­ship between Israel and world Jewry. 

This defin­i­tive account of the attacks of Octo­ber 7 – part­ly an oral his­to­ry and part­ly a work of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism – fills the spaces between the facts of the day with the thoughts, fears, and mem­o­ries of peo­ple who lived it. The book returns the nar­ra­tive to the peo­ple who expe­ri­enced it, with­out an agen­da or the fil­ters of pol­i­tics, mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, or media noise. Yaron, an expe­ri­enced jour­nal­ist, cre­ates a web of sto­ries which links the vic­tims and sur­vivors of 10/7 in a way that repli­cates and high­lights the inter­con­nect­ed­ness of Israeli life, while shin­ing a light on the diver­si­ty of the peo­ple that make up the Israeli pop­u­la­tion. 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. 

With the selec­tion of Yaron’s book as a Natan Notable Book, the com­mit­tee not­ed the impor­tance of rec­og­niz­ing the human­i­ty behind an event that is a dai­ly head­line — one that has been exam­ined and mourned, vil­i­fied and dis­missed. At a time when social media head­lines reduce whole lives to one image and boy­cotts are attempt­ing to silence voic­es that chal­lenge the main­stream nar­ra­tive, 10/7: 100 Human Sto­ries restores com­plex­i­ty to the sto­ry, to peo­ple involved in the most fun­da­men­tal ways, and to the mem­o­ries of those who did not sur­vive to tell of that day. 

As Natan Notable Books com­mit­tee mem­ber Feli­cia Her­man said, ​“Although 10/7 is pri­mar­i­ly focused on telling many of the sto­ries of that trag­ic day — sto­ries of vic­tims, sur­vivors, and the hero­ic efforts to fight back the ter­ror­ists and to save lives — we named the book a Natan Notable Book because it goes many lay­ers deep­er than that. Yaron tru­ly flesh­es out each of these lives, mak­ing each a win­dow into Jew­ish his­to­ry, Israeli his­to­ry, and the com­plex­i­ty of life in Israel today. She treats each person’s sto­ry with com­pas­sion, under­stand­ing, and respect — what­ev­er their eth­nic, reli­gious, or polit­i­cal back­ground. The book there­by becomes essen­tial read­ing for any­one try­ing to tru­ly under­stand Israel and peo­ple who call it home.” 

The author will receive a $5,000 cash prize, as well as cus­tomized sup­port for pro­mot­ing the book and its ideas, draw­ing on Natan’s and Jew­ish Book Council’s exten­sive net­works through­out the Jew­ish phil­an­thropic and com­mu­nal worlds. 

For those inter­est­ed in sub­mit­ting a recent or soon-to-come non-fic­tion title, the dead­line for sub­mis­sion for Sum­mer 2025 Natan Notable Books is April 1, 2025. Titles must have a pub­li­ca­tion date between Octo­ber 1, 2024 and Octo­ber 1, 2025. Inquiries can be direct­ed to natannotable@​jewishbooks.​org.

For more infor­ma­tion on the award and eli­gi­bil­i­ty or to sub­mit a title, go to the Natan Notable Books page.

Natan Notable Books at the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil has pre­vi­ous­ly been award­ed to Bari Weiss’ How to Fight Anti-Semi­tism (2019), Susie Linfield’s The Lion’s Den (2019), Ilan Sta­vans’ The Sev­enth Heav­en (2020), Nan­cy Sinkoff’s From Left to Right (2020), Dara Horn’s Peo­ple Love Dead Jews (2021), Michael Frank’s One Hun­dred Sat­ur­days: Stel­la Levi and the Search for a Lost World (2022), and Feed­ing Women of the Tal­mud, Feed­ing Our­selves: Uplift­ing the Voic­es of Tal­mu­dic Hero­ines and Hon­or­ing Them with Sim­ple, Veg­an Recipes edit­ed by Kenden Alfond (2022), The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel’s Bat­tle for its Inner Soul by Isabel Ker­sh­n­er (2023), Tar­get Tehran: How Israel Is Using Sab­o­tage, Cyber­war­fare, Assas­si­na­tion – and Secret Diplo­ma­cy – to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Cre­ate a New Mid­dle East by Yon­ah Jere­my Bob and Ilan Evy­atar (2023), Hen­ri­et­ta Szold: Hadas­sah and the Zion­ist Dream by Francine Klags­brun (2024). Natan Notable Books is an evo­lu­tion of the Natan Book Award, which was pre­vi­ous­ly award­ed to Mat­ti Friedman’s Spies of No Coun­try (2018) and Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land (2013). 

About Natan

Natan cat­alyzes emerg­ing phil­an­thropists to become active­ly engaged in build­ing the Jew­ish future by giv­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to cut­ting-edge ini­tia­tives in Israel and in Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties around the world, and by build­ing an inter­con­nect­ed com­mu­ni­ty of givers through grant­mak­ing, events and oth­er pro­grams. Natan believes that engaged and entre­pre­neur­ial phil­an­thropy can trans­form givers, grant recip­i­ents, and the fields in which Natan invests.

About Jew­ish Book Council

Jew­ish Book Coun­cil is a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to edu­cat­ing, enrich­ing, and strength­en­ing the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty through Jew­ish inter­est lit­er­a­ture. With over 290 tour­ing authors each year; over 3,000 book clubs; 1,400 events; its annu­al print pub­li­ca­tion, Paper Brigade; the Nation­al Jew­ish Book Awards; Natan Notable Books; its pop­u­lar lit­er­ary series Unpack­ing the Book: Jew­ish Writ­ers in con­ver­sa­tion; and a vibrant dig­i­tal pres­ence reach­ing over 700,000 read­ers, JBC ensures that Jew­ish-inter­est authors have a plat­form, and that read­ers are able to find these books and have the tools to dis­cuss them with their community.