2011 National Jewish Book Award Winners

Read the press release here

Jewish Book of the Year 

Everett Family Foundation Award

Jerusalem: The Biography
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Alfred A. Knopf/Random House

American Jewish Studies

 Celebrate 350 Award
Winner:

The Benderly Boys and American Jewish Education
Jonathan B. Krasner
Brandeis University Press

Finalist:

The Independent Orders of B’nai B’rith and True Sisters: Pioneers of a New Jewish Identity, 1843-1914
Cornelia Wilhelm
Wayne State University Press

Anthologies and Collections


 Winner:

Gender and Jewish History
Marion A. Kaplan and Deborah Dash Moore, eds.
Indiana University Press

Finalists:

Moses Mendelssohn: Writings on Judaism, Christianity, and the Bible
Michah Gottlieb, ed.
Brandeis University Press

Portraits in Literature: The Jews of Poland
Hava Bromberg Ben-Zvi, ed.
Vallentine Mitchell

Biography, Autobiography, Memoir

 The Krauss Family Award in Memory of Simon & Shulamith (Sofi) Goldberg

Winner:

MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus
Art Spiegelman
Pantheon/Random House

Finalists:

Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life
Vivian Gornick
Yale University Press

Following Ezra: What One Father Learned About Gumby, Otters, Autism, and Love from His Extraordinary Son
Tom Fields-Meyer
Penguin

Children’s and Young Adult Literature


 Winner:

Deadly: How Do You Catch an Invisible Killer
Julie Chibbaro
Atheneum/Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

In the Face of Evil
Tema N. Merback
FriesenPress

To Hope and Back: The Journey of the St. Louis
Kathy Kacer
Second Story Press

Music Was It: Young Leonard Bernstein
Susan Goldman Rubin
Charlesbridge

Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice

 Myra H. Kraft Memorial Award

Winner:

A Guide to Jewish Practice: Everyday Living
Rabbi David A. Teutsch
RRC Press

Finalists:

The Sacred Table: Creating a Jewish Food Ethic
Mary L. Zamore
Central Conference of American Rabbis

The Koren Rosh Hashana Mahzor
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Koren Publishers Jerusalem

Fiction

 JJ Greenberg Memorial Award

Winner:

Until the Dawn's Light
Aharon Appelfeld; Jeffrey M. Green, trans.
Schocken Books/Random House

Finalists:

One More River
Mary Glickman
Open Road Integrated Media

Life on Sandpaper
Yoram Kaniuk; Anthony Berris, trans.
Dalkey Archive Press

The Vices
Lawrence Douglas
Other Press

History

 Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award

Winner:

The Anatomy of Israel’s Survival
Hirsh Goodman
PublicAffairs Books

Finalists:

Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza
Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole
Schocken Books/Nextbook Press/Random House

The Unmaking of Israel
Gershom Gorenberg
HarperCollins

Holocaust


Winner:

Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice
Gerald Steinacher
Oxford University Press

Finalists:

The Eichmann Trial
Deborah Lipstadt
Schocken Books/Nextbook Press/Random House


Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust
David Shneer
Rutgers University Press

Illustrated Children’s Book

 Louis Posner Memorial Award

Winner:

The Golem's Latkes
Adapted by Eric A. Kimmel; Aaron Jasinski, illus.
Marshall Cavendish

Finalists:

Lipman Pike, America's First Home Run King
Richard Michelson; Zachary Pullen, illus.
Sleeping Bear Press

Marcel Marceau, Master of Mime
Gloria Spielman; Manon Gauthier, illus.
Kar-Ben Publishing

Modern Jewish Thought and Experience

 Dorot Foundation Award in Memory of Joy Ungerleider Mayerson

Winner:

The Choice to Be: A Jewish Path to Self and Spirituality
Rabbi Jeremy Kagan
Feldheim Publishers

Finalists:

The Koren Rosh HaShana Mahzor
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Koren Publishers Jerusalem

Disenchantment: George Steiner and the Meaning of Western Civilization after Auschwitz
Catherine D. Chatterley
Syracuse University Press

Outstanding Debut Fiction

 Foundation for Jewish Culture’s Goldberg Prize

Winner:

Boxer, Beetle
Ned Beauman
Bloomsbury USA

Finalist:

A Stranger on the Planet
Adam Schwartz
Soho Press

Poetry


Winner:

Wait
C.K. Williams
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

These Mountains: Selected Poems of Rivka Miriam
Rivka Miriam; Linda Stern Zisquit, trans.
The Toby Press

Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010
Adrienne Rich
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Scholarship

 Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award

Winner:

Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures
Talya Fishman
University of Pennsylvania Press

Finalists:

Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe
Elisheva Carlebach
Harvard University Press

Sephardic Culture

 Mimi S. Frank Award in Memory of Becky Levy

Winner:

Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine
Michelle U. Campos
Stanford University Press

Finalists:

Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora
Julia R. Lieberman, ed.
Brandeis University Press

Modern Ladino Culture
Olga Borovaya
Indiana University Press

Visual Arts


Winner:

Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention
Mason Klein
Yale University Press/The Jewish Museum

Finalists:

Houdini: Art and Magic
Brooke Kamin Rapaport, ed.
Yale University Press/The Jewish Museum

Building after Auschwitz: Jewish Architecture and the Memory of the Holocaust
Gavriel D. Rosenfeld
Yale University Press

A Journey through Jewish Worlds: Highlights from the Braginsky Collection of Hebrew Manuscripts and Printed Books
Evelyn M. Cohen, Sharon Liberman Mintz, and Emile G.L. Schrijver, eds.
Bijzondere Collecties, Universiteit Van Amsterdam

Women’s Studies

 Barbara Dobkin Award

Winner:

The JPS Bible Commentary: Ruth
Dr. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Dr. Tikva Frymer-Kensky
The Jewish Publication Society

Finalists:

Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust
Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel, eds.
Brandeis University Press

In Her Hands: The Education of Jewish Girls in Tsarist Russia
Eliyana R. Adler
Wayne State University Press

Biblical Seductions: Six Stories Retold Based on Talmud and Midrash
Sandra E. Rapoport
KTAV Publishing House

Writing Based on Archival Material

 The JDC-Herbert Katzki Award

Winner:

Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams
Charles King
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.