National Jewish Book Awards

History

Year	Endowment	Winner	Finalists
2025	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Elissa Bemporad Jews in the Soviet Union: A History Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life, 1917 – 1930, Volume 1 New York University Press	Hillel Cohen Haim Watzman Enemies, a Love Story: Mizrahi-Arab-Ashkenazi Relations Since the Dawn of Zionism Penn State University Press Jochen Hellbeck World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews Penguin Press Richard Kreitner Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery Farrar, Straus and Giroux
2024	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Jonathan Marc Gribetz Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO Effort to Know the Enemy Princeton University Press	Asaf Elia-Shalev Israel’s Black Panthers: The Radicals Who Punctured a Nation’s Founding Myth UC Press Chris Heath No Road Leading Back: An Improbable Escape from the Nazis in a Place Called Ponar, and the Tangled Way We Tell the Story of the Holocaust Schocken
2023	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Jeremy Eichler Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance Knopf	Shmuel Feiner; Jeffrey M. Green, trans. The Jewish Eighteenth Century, Volume 2: A European Biography, 1750 – 1800 Indiana University Press
2022	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Kenneth B. Moss An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland Harvard University Press	Michael Brenner; Jeremiah Riemer, trans. In Hitler’s Munich: Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism Princeton University Press Matthias B. Lehmann The Baron: Maurice de Hirsch and the Jewish Nineteenth Century Stanford University Press Jessica M. Marglin The Shamama Case: Contesting Citizenship across the Modern Mediterranean Princeton University Press
2021	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	James McAuley The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France Yale University Press	Charles Dellheim Belonging and Betrayal: How Jews Made the Art World Modern Brandeis University Press Jeffrey Veidlinger In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918 – 1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust Metropolitan Books
2020	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Laura Arnold Leibman The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects Bard Graduate Center	Natan M. Meir Stepchildren of the Shtetl: The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800 – 1939 Stanford University Press Adam Teller Rescue the Surviving Souls: The Great Jewish Refugee Crisis of the Seventeenth Century Princeton University Press
2019	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Daniel Okrent The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America Scribner	Matti Friedman Winner of the 2018 Natan Book Award Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel Algonquin Yaakov Katz Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power St. Martin’s Press Jodi Magness Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth Princeton University Press Peter Schrag The World of Aufbau: Hitler’s Refugees in America University of Wisconsin Press
2018	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Ronen Bergman Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations Random House	Michael Brenner In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea Princeton University Press Shira Klein Italy’s Jews from Emancipation to Fascism Cambridge University Press Steven J. Zipperstein Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History Liveright
2017	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Yair Mintzker The Many Deaths of Jew Suss: The Notorious Trial and Execution of an Eighteenth-Century Court Jew Princeton University Press	Jeremy Dauber Finalist for the 2018 Natan Book Award Jewish Comedy: A Serious History W. W. Norton & Company David E. Fishman The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis ForeEdge Lewis Glinert The Story of Hebrew Princeton University Press
2016	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Uri Bar-Joseph The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel Harper/An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers	Cary Nelson, ed. Dreams Deferred Indiana University Press Philippe Sands East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity” Alfred A. Knopf
2015	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Dennis Ross Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship from Truman to Obama Farrar, Straus & Giroux	Dan Ephron Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel W.W. Norton & Company
2014	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern The Golden Age Shtetl: A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe Princeton University Press	Shlomo Avineri; Haim Watzman, trans. Herzl’s Vision: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State BlueBridge Gary Philip Zola We Called Him Rabbi Abraham: Lincoln and American Jewry, A Documentary History Southern Illinois University Press
2013	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Ari Shavit Winner of the 2014 Natan Book Award My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel Spiegel & Grau	Jo Roberts Contested Land, Contested Memory: Israel’s Jews and Arabs and the Ghosts of Catastrophe Dundum Reiner Stach; Shelley Frisch, trans. Kafka: The Years of Insight Princeton University Press
2012	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Anita Shapira Israel: A History Brandeis University Press	Daniel B. Schwartz The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image Princeton University Press Bernard Wasserstein On the Eve: The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War Simon & Schuster Steven Gimbel Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion Johns Hopkins University Press
2011	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Hirsh Goodman The Anatomy of Israel’s Survival Public Affairs/Perseus Book Group	Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza Schocken Books/Nextbook Press Gershom Gorenberg The Unmaking of Israel Harper
2010	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	David B. Ruderman Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History Princeton University Press	Hayim Tawil and Bernard Schneider Crown of Aleppo: The Mystery of the Oldest Hebrew Bible Codex Jewish Publication Society Yehuda Avner; Martin Gilbert, intro. The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership The Toby Press
2009	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Beryl Satter Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America Metropolitan Books
2008	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Benny Morris 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War Yale University Press
2007	Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award	Michael Makovsky Churchill’s Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft Yale University Press
2006	Gerrard and Ella Berman Award	David Cesarani Becoming Eichmann Da Capo Press

Nation­al Jew­ish Book Awards

By Year

By Category

His­to­ry

A non­fic­tion work about the Jew­ish his­tor­i­cal experience.

Elis­sa Bemporad

Hil­lel Cohen Haim Watz­man

Jochen Hell­beck

Richard Kre­it­ner

Jonathan Marc Gribetz

Asaf Elia-Shalev

Chris Heath

Jere­my Eichler

Shmuel Feiner; Jeffrey M. Green, trans.

Ken­neth B. Moss

Michael Brenner; Jeremiah Riemer, trans.

Matthias B. Lehmann

Jes­si­ca M. Marglin

James McAuley

Charles Dell­heim

Jef­frey Veidlinger

Lau­ra Arnold Leibman

Natan M. Meir

Adam Teller

Daniel Okrent

Matti Friedman Winner of the 2018 Natan Book Award

Yaakov Katz

Jodi Mag­ness

Peter Schrag

Ronen Bergman

Michael Brenner

Shira Klein

Steven J. Zipperstein

Yair Mintzk­er

Jeremy Dauber Finalist for the 2018 Natan Book Award

David E. Fishman

Lewis Glin­ert

Uri Bar-Joseph

Cary Nelson, ed.

Philippe Sands

Den­nis Ross

Dan Ephron

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern

Shlomo Avineri; Haim Watzman, trans.

Gary Philip Zola

Ari Shavit Winner of the 2014 Natan Book Award

Jo Roberts

Reiner Stach; Shelley Frisch, trans.

Anita Shapira

Daniel B. Schwartz

Bernard Wasserstein

Steven Gim­bel

Hirsh Goodman

Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole

Gershom Gorenberg

David B. Ruderman

Hayim Tawil and Bernard Schneider

Yehuda Avner; Martin Gilbert, intro.

Beryl Satter

Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America

Benny Morris

Michael Makovsky

David Cesarani

National Jewish Book Awards

History

A nonfiction work about the Jewish historical experience.

Elissa Bemporad

Hillel Cohen

Haim Watzman

Jochen Hellbeck

Richard Kreitner

Jeremy Eichler

Kenneth B. Moss

Jessica M. Marglin

Charles Dellheim

Jeffrey Veidlinger

Laura Arnold Leibman

Jodi Magness

Yair Mintzker

Lewis Glinert

Dennis Ross

Steven Gimbel