Reading the 2020 National Jewish Book Awards Through Sephardic Eyes
David Shasha
2020 National Jewish Book Award Winners
By: Jewish Book Council Staff
I do not believe that in all the time I have published the SHU that I made reference to the National Jewish Book Awards.
Each year I look at the list with its pathetic Sephardi tokenism, that category’s winner usually written by an Ashkenazi, and its repugnant White Jewish Supremacy.
This year the list contains a bunch of names that will be familiar to SHU readers, and I would like to present the articles I wrote on those authors’ works along with a few resources to provide some context for the problem.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/xoky3O7XU5o/m/3gn5k60EAwAJ
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/ViNnB7rIjps
Laura Leibman
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/ggJAFoCD7us/m/llz_Gl0BAgAJ
Nancy Sinkoff
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/gN0PF_9iMH4/m/coNkG1NTBQAJ
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-yiddishist-neocon/
Yehuda Kurtzer
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/ytx5ztODWRA/m/MiqL6_6fBQAJ
Devi Mays
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/i7GjycvgTh8/m/WXhKM8lgBwAJ
Moshe Halbertal
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/ihDpdBeGvZY/m/Of4z7vsTBAAJ
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1265852133579196
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdgYzRyEgyk
Indeed, when seen in its totality, the list reminds us of just how little Sephardim rate in the White Jewish Supremacy; our history is marginalized as Social Science, our intellectual leaders vilified, our Religious Humanism erased from the discourse in favor of Ashkenazi factionalism and its dysfunction. What little there is in Sephardic representation is fully mediated through the Ashkenazi racism and Orientalism.
DS
Jewish Book Council announced the winners of the 2020 National Jewish Book Awards, now in its seventieth year. The winners include Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (z”l) (Basic Books), which was named the Everett Family Foundation Book of the Year. Rabbi Sacks’s (z”l) final book draws on his own experiences, as well as texts by Jewish philosophers and scholars, to illustrate the importance of changing our world by shifting our focus to the collective good. This book will help ground Sacks’s legacy as one of the great Jewish thinkers of the twenty-first century.
Laura Arnold Leibman wins awards in three different categories with her impressive book The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects (Bard Graduate Center): the Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award for History, the American Jewish Studies Celebrate 350 Award, and the Women Studies Barbara Dobkin Award.
The second Jane and Stuart Weitzman Family Award for Food Writing and Cookbooks goes to Now for Something Sweet by the Monday Morning Cooking Club, which recognizes the tradition of Jewish community cookbooks and their role as social history, with this particular title highlighting stories from the Jewish community in Australia.
Top honors for fiction have been given to novels written by authors who are all receiving their first National Jewish Book Awards. The winners include Colum McCann’s Apeirogon (Random House), which was given the JJ Greenberg Memorial Award for Fiction; Max Gross’s The Lost Shtetl (HarperVia), the recipient of the The Miller Family Book Club Award in Memory of Helen Dunn Weinstein and June Keit Miller; and Rachel Beanland’s Florence Adler Swims Forever (Simon & Schuster), the winner of the Goldberg Prize for Debut Fiction.
The winner of the Holocaust Award in Memory of Ernest W. Michel is The Unanswered Letter: One Holocaust Family’s Desperate Plea for Help by Faris Cassell (Regnery History). Nautilus and Bone by Lisa Richter (Frontenac House) wins the Berru Poetry Award in Memory of Ruth and Bernie Weinflash.
Arthur Green is awarded his first National Jewish Book Award for Judaism for the World: Reflections on God, Life, and Love (Yale University Press) in the category of Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice in Memory of Myra H. Kraft. In addition to being selected as the Everett Family Foundation Book of the Year, Rabbi Sacks’s Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times also receives the Modern Jewish Thought & Experience Dorot Foundation Award in Memory of Joy Ungerleider Mayerson.
The Krauss Family Autobiography & Memoir Award in Memory of Simon & Shulamith (Sofi) Goldberg is presented to Ariana Neumann for her memoir, When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father’s War and What Remains (Scribner). The third annual Biography Award in Memory of Sara Berenson Stone is given to From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History (Wayne State University Press) by Nancy Sinkoff, which was also named a Natan Notable Book from Natan Fund and Jewish Book Council in fall 2020.
For the second year in a row, Lesléa Newman has won the National Jewish Book Award in the Children’s Picture Book category. This year, the award was given to her new book Welcoming Elijah: A Passover Tale with a Tail illustrated by Susan Gal (Charlesbridge). Gavriel Savit receives the Young Adult Award for The Way Back (Random House Children’s Books), his second National Jewish Book Award. For the first time, Jewish Book Council is proud to present a Middle Grade Literature Award, with this year’s prize going to Anne Blankman for The Blackbird Girls (Viking Children’s Books, Penguin/Random House).
This year, we are pleased to present the Mentorship Award in Honor of Carolyn Starman Hessel to Deborah Harris. Harris is Israel’s premier literary agent. She has discovered and nurtured authors for decades, and her roster ranges from Israel’s acknowledged luminaries to up-and-coming writers in every genre and for every age. Beyond her work within Israel, Harris is tireless in her effort to put Israeli books in translation into international markets, many of which are difficult to penetrate. She has said that the “translator is the gateway to learning about the world.”
A complete list of the 2020 National Jewish Book Award winners and finalists can be found below, and additional information is available at www.JewishBookCouncil.org.
Jewish Book of the Year
Everett Family Foundation Award Winner:
Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Basic Books
Mentorship Award in Honor of Carolyn Starman Hessel
Deborah Harris
Deborah moved to Jerusalem from the United States in 1979, after working at Viking Penguin in New York. She cofounded The Domino Press and The Harris/Elon Agency, which in 1991 became The Deborah Harris Agency. She has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Jerusalem International Book Fair for twenty-five years, as well as a founding board member of The Jerusalem Film and Television Fund. In 2011, she received the Friend of Jerusalem Award. In 2018, Deborah was named Agent of the Year by the London Book Fair and The International Publishers Association.
American Jewish Studies Celebrate 350 Award
Winner:
The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects
Laura Arnold Leibman
Bard Graduate Center
Finalists:
Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age
Ayala Fader
Princeton University Press
Laurel Leff
Yale University Press
The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots That Shook New York City
Scott D. Seligman
Potomac Books
Autobiography and Memoir
The Krauss Family Award in Memory of Simon & Shulamith (Sofi) Goldberg
Winner:
When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father’s War and What Remains
Ariana Neumann
Scribner (Simon & Schuster)
Finalists:
Steerforth Press
I Want You to Know We’re Still Here
Esther Safran Foer
Crown Publishing Group
Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth
Benjamin Taylor
Penguin Books
Biography
In Memory of Sara Berenson Stone
Winner:
Nancy Sinkoff
Wayne State University Press
Finalists:
Andrea Dworkin: The Feminist as Revolutionary
Martin Duberman
The New Press
Rabbi Leo Baeck: Living a Religious Imperative in Troubled Times
Michael A. Meyer
University of Pennsylvania Press
Other Press
Book Club
The Miller Family Award in Memory of Helen Dunn Weinstein and June Keit Miller
Winner:
Max Gross
HarperVia
Finalists:
Jan Eliasberg
Little, Brown (Back Bay)
Kristin Harmel
Gallery Books
The Yellow Bird Sings: A Novel
Jennifer Rosner
Flatiron Books
A. B. Yehoshua, translated by Stuart Schoffman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Children’s Picture Book
Winner:
Welcoming Elijah: A Passover Tale with a Tail
Lesléa Newman, illustrated by Susan Gal
Charlesbridge
Finalists:
Judah Touro Didn’t Want to Be Famous
Audrey Ades, illustrated by Vivien Mildenberger
Kar-Ben Publishing
No Steps Behind: Beate Sirota Gordon’s Battle for Women’s Rights in Japan
Jeff Gottesfeld, illustrated by Shiella Witanto
Creston Books
Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice
Myra H. Kraft Memorial Award
Winner:
Judaism for the World: Reflections on God, Life, and Love
Arthur Green
Yale University Press
Finalists:
CCAR Press
Prepare My Prayer: Recipes to Awaken the Soul
Rabbi Dov Singer
Koren Publishers Jerusalem
Debut Fiction
Goldberg Prize
Winner:
Florence Adler Swims Forever: A Novel
Rachel Beanland
Simon & Schuster
Finalists:
David Hopen
HarperCollins
The Yellow Bird Sings: A Novel
Jennifer Rosner
Flatiron Books
Education and Jewish Identity
In Memory of Dorothy Kripke
Winner:
Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps
Sarah Bunin Benor, Jonathan Krasner, and Sharon Avni
Rutgers University Press
Finalist:
The Unstoppable Startup: Mastering Israel’s Secret Rules of Chutzpah
Uri Adoni
HarperCollins Leadership
Fiction
JJ Greenberg Memorial Award
Winner:
Colum McCann
Random House
Finalists:
Emuna Elon
Atria Books
Eshkol Nevo, translated by Sondra Silverston
Other Press
Nessa Rapoport
Counterpoint Press
Yishai Sarid, translated by Yardenne Greenspan
Restless Books
Food Writing & Cookbooks
Jane and Stuart Weitzman Family Award
Winner:
Monday Morning Cooking Club
HarperCollins
Finalist:
Ben Katchor
Schocken Books
History
Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award
Winner:
The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects
Laura Arnold Leibman
Bard Graduate Center
Finalists:
Natan M. Meir
Stanford University Press
Rescue the Surviving Souls: The Great Jewish Refugee Crisis of the Seventeenth Century
Adam Teller
Princeton University Press
Holocaust
In Memory of Ernest W. Michel
Winner:
The Unanswered Letter: One Holocaust Family’s Desperate Plea for Help
Faris Cassell
Regnery History
Middle Grade Literature
Winner:
Anne Blankman
Viking Children’s Books, Penguin/Random House
Finalists:
Tziporah Cohen
Groundwood Books
Sofiya Pasternack
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Chance: Escape from the Holocaust
Uri Shulevitz
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers/Macmillan
Modern Jewish Thought and Experience
Dorot Foundation Award in Memory of Joy Ungerleider Mayerson
Winner:
Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Basic Books
Finalists:
Esther: Power, Fate, and Fragility in Exile
Dr. Erica Brown
Koren Publishers Jerusalem
The New Jewish Canon: Ideas & Debates 1980 – 2015
Yehuda Kurtzer and Claire E. Sufrin
Academic Studies Press
Poetry
Berru Award in Memory of Ruth and Bernie Weinflash
Winner:
Lisa Richter
Frontenac House
Finalists:
Elvira Basevich
Pank Books
Asylum: A personal, historical, natural inquiry in 103 lyric sections
Jill Bialosky
Alfred A. Knopf
Adam Kammerling
Out-Spoken Press
Scholarship
Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award
Winner:
Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism
Sarit Kattan Gribetz
Princeton University Press
Finalists:
Nahmanides: Law and Mysticism
Moshe Halbertal, translated by Daniel Tabak
Yale University Press
Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism
Annette Yoshiko Reed
Cambridge University Press
Sephardic Culture
Mimi S. Frank Award in Memory of Becky Levy
Winner:
Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora
Devi Mays
Stanford University Press
Finalists:
The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History
Dina Danon
Stanford University Press
Stefan Hertmans, translated by David McKay
Alfred A. Knopf
Dalia Kandiyoti
Stanford University Press
Women Studies
Barbara Dobkin Award
Winner:
The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects
Laura Arnold Leibman
Bard Graduate Center
Finalists:
Her Story, My Story? Writing About Women and the Holocaust
Edited by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz and Dalia Ofer
Peter Lang Publishers
The Rebellion of the Daughters: Jewish Women Runaways in Habsburg Galicia
Rachel Manekin
Princeton University Press
Writing Based on Archival Material
The JDC-Herbert Katzki Award
Winner:
Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth
Magda Teter
Harvard University Press
Finalists:
The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue
Marina Rustow
Princeton University Press
Leaving Zion: Jewish Emigration from Palestine and Israel after World War II
Ori Yehudai
Cambridge University Press
Young Adult Literature
Winner:
Gavriel Savit
Random House Children’s Books
Finalists:
Marisa Kanter
Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing
Rachel Lynn Solomon
Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing
From The Jewish Book Council January 27, 2021