Julia Ioffe never set out to write a book about herself, so it’s ironic that she won the autobiography and memoir category of the 2026 National Jewish Book Awards.
The Washington resident is the author of “Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia From Revolution to Autocracy,” published in October.
Facing daily systemic discrimination and treated as second-class citizens due to their Judaism, 7-year-old Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union and settled in Columbia, Maryland.
A chapter of “Motherland” details Ioffe’s teen years, when she was a student at Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School in Baltimore.
“My mom initiated me into Soviet history and what it means to come from that place and to be from a family that survived all that,” Ioffe recalled.
Her family’s Jewish identity is a major facet of “Motherland.”
“It’s impossible to tell the story of my great-grandmothers and my grandmothers and my mom, myself, without addressing the Jewish aspect of it,” Ioffe said. “The reason the book is written in English and the reason I’m here and not in Russia is because of antisemitism.”
She added that such discrimination affected the women in her family “at every step of their lives,” dictating the choices they made and the opportunities available to them.
“It’s an added layer to the history,” Ioffe said. “So it’s not just about Soviet history; it’s not just about women’s history; it’s also about Jewish identity.”
A team of more than 120 judges parsed through hundreds of book submissions, according to Naomi Firestone-Teeter, the CEO of Jewish Book Council. Ioffe said she’s pleased that she won an award for her memoir.
“It’s incredibly humbling and unexpected, and it’s a massive, massive honor [for] which I’m grateful,” Ioffe said. “It’s also a pleasant surprise because this book has always been primarily about Russian history and women’s history.”
At first glance, it’s not apparent that “Motherland” has Jewish ties — the red book cover features the white silhouette of a Russian nesting doll split in two. The word “Jewish” is not mentioned in the title.
“It’s such a core part of the book because it’s such a core part of my family and my own identity, that it makes me feel that whoever picked the book … really saw it, really read it, really understood it on a deeper level,” Ioffe said. “To have the book out in the world, but also to have an organization like the Jewish Book Council really see the book … makes it so deeply gratifying.”
Ioffe began researching for her book in spring of 2018. “It wasn’t supposed to be my memoir; I wanted it to be more of a history and a reported book, but my publishers kept saying, ‘We want more of you in it, more of your family in it,’” she said.
Ioffe studied Soviet history in college and returned to Moscow 20 years after originally leaving.
“I wanted a broader book about Russia, to try to explain Russia to an American audience in a way that wasn’t centered on Vladimir Putin,” she said. “I just felt like he took up too much of the conversation.”
Ioffe recalled constantly being asked to write about and discuss the Russian president, “and I was really tired of it.”
“I wanted to explain Russia from a different vantage point,” Ioffe said.
She added that the Americans she spoke with were often “really surprised” that Ioffe’s grandmothers and great-grandmothers in Russia had been scientists and doctors during the early 20th century, when their Western counterparts couldn’t have those careers.
“I realized to tell that story, I needed the history, and to make the history more relatable, I needed the family story,” she said.
“Motherland” became a hybrid of history and memoir, covering Russia’s shift from promoting radical feminism to embracing traditional gender roles. But it wasn’t easy for Ioffe to insert herself into the story.
“I found it very difficult,” Ioffe said of writing in the first person. “It was not as hard when writing about my great-grandmothers and grandmothers … Their stories are really interesting because they interweave with the story of the revolution and World War II and other big world historical changes. I just found my story the least compelling and the one I least wanted to tell.”
Her background as a journalist didn’t help.
“You go into journalism not to write about yourself … you go into it because you find other people interesting,” Ioffe said. “You find the world around you interesting. You don’t go into it to write about yourself. So it felt really, really unnatural and uncomfortable most of the time.”
That discomfort led to a back-and-forth between Ioffe and her publishers, who urged her to put “more of herself” into the book. She would add two sentences, but the publishers wanted paragraphs more. “So it’s wild to win in this [category],” Ioffe laughed.
Another Washington author, Sarah Hurwitz, won in the contemporary Jewish life category for her 2025 book, “As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us.”
The awardees will be honored with a celebratory dinner by the Jewish Book Council on March 25.
