Jewish Book Council has for the first time in its history given its top honor to a series as Yale University Press’s Jewish Lives Series was chosen as the 2014 Jewish Book of the Year.
The series illuminates lives of great Jewish figures and is four years into publication. Ileene Smith is the editorial director. Steven J. Zipperstein and Anita Shapira are series editors.
“JBC seeks to highlight and applaud the publisher, Yale University Press in collaboration with the Leon D. Black Foundation, for taking on this important task as well as show support for the endeavor and continue to nurture an audience for works that share the stories and people behind our collective history,” JBC’s website stated.
Here are the other winners and finalists:
American Jewish Studies
Celebrate 350 Award
Winner:
The Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire
Adam D. Mendelsohn
NYU Press
Finalist:
After They Closed the Gates: Jewish Illegal Immigration to the United States, 1921-1965
Libby Garland
The University of Chicago Press
Biography, Autobiography, Memoir
The Krauss Family Award in Memory of Simon & Shulamith (Sofi) Goldberg
Winner:
The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World
George Prochnik
Other Press
Finalists:
Little Failure: A Memoir
Gary Shteyngart
Random House
Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History
Joseph Telushkin
HarperWave
David: The Divided Heart
David Wolpe
Yale University Press
Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Winner:
Spinoza: The Outcast Thinker
Devra Lehmann
Namelos
Finalists:
Storm
Donna Jo Napoli
Simon and Schuster
Tucson Jo
Carol Matas
Fictive Press
I Lived on Butterfly Hill
Marjorie Agosin; Lee White, illus.
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice
Myra H. Kraft Memorial Award
Winner:
A Guide to the Complex: Contemporary Halakhic Debates
Shlomo M. Brody
Maggid
Finalists:
Maps and Meaning: Levitical Models for Contemporary Care
Nancy H. Wiener and Jo Hirschmann
Fortress Press
The December Project: An Extraordinary Rabbi and a Skeptical Seeker Confront Life’s Greatest Mystery
Sara Davidson
HarperOne
The Soul of Jewish Social Justice
Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz
Urim Publications
Education and Jewish Identity
In Memory of Dorothy Kripke
Winner:
A Philosophy of Havruta: Understanding and Teaching the Art of Text Study in Pairs
Elie Holzer with Orit Kent
Academic Studies Press
Finalist:
Got Religion?: How Churches, Mosques, and Synagogues Can Bring Young People Back
Naomi Schaefer Riley
Templeton Press
Fiction
JJ Greenberg Memorial Award
Winner:
The Betrayers
David Bezmozgis
Little, Brown and Company
Finalists:
The UnAmericans
Molly Antopol
W.W. Norton & Company
The Luminous Heart of Jonah S.
Gina B. Nahai
Akashic Books
A Replacement Life
Boris Fishman
HarperCollins
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
Joshua Ferris
Little, Brown and Company
History
Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award
Winner:
The Golden Age Shtetl: A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern
Princeton University Press
Finalists:
Herzl’s Vision: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State
Shlomo Avineri; Haim Watzman, trans.
BlueBridge
We Called Him Rabbi Abraham: Lincoln and American Jewry, A Documentary History
Gary Philip Zola
Southern Illinois University Press
Holocaust
Winner:
Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust—Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind’s Darkest Hour
James A. Grymes
Harper Perennial
Finalists:
Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer
Bettina Stangneth; Ruth Martin, trans.
Knopf
Gates of Tears: The Holocaust in the Lublin District
David Silberklangr
Yad Vashem
Conscripted Slaves: Hungarian Jewish Forced Laborers on the Eastern Front During the Second World War
Robert Rozett
Yad Vashem
Illustrated Children’s Book
Louis Posner Memorial Award
Winner:
The Patchwork Torah
Allison Ofanansky; Elsa Oriol, illus.
Kar-Ben Publishing
Finalists:
Never Say a Mean Word Again: A Tale from Medieval Spain
Jacqueline Jules; Durga Yael Bernhard, illus.
Wisdom Tales
The Whispering Town
Jennifer Elvgren; Fabio Santomauro, illus.
Kar-Ben Publishing
Modern Jewish Thought and Experience
Dorot Foundation Award in Memory of Joy Ungerleider Mayerson
Winner:
The Koren Ani Tefillah Siddur
Rabbi Jay Goldmintz, concept and commentary
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, introduction and translation
Koren Publishers Jerusalem
Finalists:
On the Relationship of Mitzvot Between Man and His Neighbor and Man and His Maker
Daniel Sperber
Urim Publications
Maps and Meaning: Levitical Models for Contemporary Care
Nancy H. Wiener and Jo Hirschmann
Fortress Press
Israel: Is It Good for the Jews?
Richard Cohen
Simon & Schuster
Outstanding Debut Fiction
Foundation for Jewish Culture’s Goldberg Prize
Winner:
The Mathematician’s Shiva
Stuart Rojstaczer
Penguin Books
Finalists:
The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street
Susan Jane Gilman
Grand Central Publishing
The Marrying of Chani Kaufman
Eve Harris
Grove Press, Black Cat
The UnAmericans
Molly Antopol
W.W. Norton & Company
You Shall Know Our Names
Ezekiel Nieto Benzion
CreateSpace
Scholarship
Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award
Winner:
Outside the Bible, 3-Volume Set: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture
Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel and Lawrence H. Schiffman, eds.
Jewish Publication Society
Finalist:
We Called Him Rabbi Abraham: Lincoln and American Jewry, A Documentary History
Gary Philip Zola
Southern Illinois University Press
Sephardic Culture
Mimi S. Frank Award in Memory of Becky Levy
Winner:
Sephardi Lives: A Documentary History, 1700–1950
Julia Phillips Cohen and Sarah Abrevaya Stein, eds.
Stanford University Press
Finalists:
The Business of Identity: Jews, Muslims and Economic Life in Medieval Egypt
Phillip Ackerman-Lieberman
Stanford University Press
Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform
Francesca Bregoli
Stanford University Press
Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era
Julia Phillips Cohen
Oxford University Press
Women’s Studies
Barbara Dobkin Award
Winner:
A Question of Tradition: Women Poets in Yiddish, 1586-1987
Kathryn Hellerstein
Stanford University Press
Finalists:
Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz: Men, Women, and Everyday Religious Observance
Elisheva Baumgarten
University of Pennsylvania Press
Chapters of the Heart: Jewish Women Sharing the Torah of our Lives
Sue Levi Elwell and Nancy Fuchs Kreimer
Wipf and Stock Publishers
Writing Based on Archival Material
The JDC-Herbert Katzki Award
Winner:
Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era
Julia Phillips Cohen
Oxford University Press
Finalists:
Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform
Francesca Bregoli
Stanford University Press
Jewish Rights, National Rites: Nationalism and Autonomy in Late Imperial and Revolutionary Russia
Simon Rabinovitch
Stanford University Press
