New York, July 30, 2019 – Jewish Book Council is pleased to announce the creation of the Jane and Stuart Weitzman Family Award for Food Writing and Cookbooks, a new award to honor books that illuminate Jewish life, identity, and culture through a culinary lens. Submissions will be open not only to cookbooks, but also to memoirs and history that focus on Jewish food.
In creating this prize, Jewish Book Council president Jane Weitzman explained: “This new award is meant to showcase the diversity of the Jewish food world, and, in doing so, the diversity of Jewish life. From modern Israeli cuisine, which is finding its way into cities across the world; to personal stories around Jewish food, family, and culture; to the history of Jewish cuisine from around the globe, the culinary world is an important way for people to connect with Jewish life and identity.”
The judging panel for this award includes some of the most celebrated chefs and food writers within the Jewish world:
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Darra Goldstein, an award-winning cookbook author, world-renowned food scholar, and founding editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, named the 2012 Publication of the Year by the James Beard Foundation
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Amelia Saltsman, an award-winning author of The Seasonal Jewish Kitchen and The Santa Monica Farmers’ Market Cookbook, who writes about food and culture through a seasonal lens.
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Naama Shefi, founder of the Jewish Food Society
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Michael Twitty, author of The Cooking Gene and winner of the 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award for Book of the Year and Best Food Writing
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Molly Yeh, American chef, blogger, and cookbook author, emmy-nominated and James Beard Award-nominated TV star, and host of Food Network’s Girl Meets Farm
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Jeffrey Yoskowitz, chef entrepreneur, food and culture writer, co-founder of The Gefilteria, and co-author of The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods
Now in its sixty-ninth year, the National Jewish Book Awards celebrate Jewish literary achievement in a wide range of genres and form, honoring writers in twenty different categories each year.
The National Jewish Book Awards is a program of the Jewish Book Council, a nonprofit dedicated to the enrichment of Jewish life and education through literature. Promoting the reading, writing, and publication of books of Jewish interest, Jewish Book Council is the flagship of Jewish Book Month, the National Jewish Book Club, and the JBC Network of JCCs, Federations, synagogues, among other institutions that host authors for conversations in communities across America about issues around Jewish life, identity, and culture.
Submissions for the 2019 National Jewish Book Awards are now open! To submit your book click here, or contact Jewish Book Council at njba@jewishbooks.org or (212) 201‑2920.
Evie Saphire-Bernstein is the program director of Jewish Book Council. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a B.A. in English and a minor in Jewish Studies. Before joining the Jewish Book Council team in 2015, she spent a year and a half working within the Conservative Movement as the Network Liaison for the Schechter Day School Network. She is a recent transplant to New York City, after living in Chicago for most of her life. In her spare time, Evie is a writer and blogger.
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