The Jewish Book Council crowned Gal Beckerman's "When They Come For Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry" the Jewish Book of the Year today, as it also named winners in 15 other categories for the 2010 National Jewish Book Awards.
Given annually since 1948, the Jewish Book Awards recognize outstanding books on Jewish topics each year in sixteen different categories, including debut fiction, scholarship, biography and Holocaust. Additionally, special awards will be bestowed this year upon Cynthia Ozick, Gal Beckerman, and Harold Grinspoon.
A gala award ceremony will be held on March 9 at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan to honor this year's winners. Masters of ceremony for the event are Ari. L. Goldman, author and professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and Alana Newhouse, editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine.
The complete list of award winners is as follows:
Everett Family Foundation
Jewish Book of the Year Award
When They Come For Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Gal Beckerman
Jewish Book Council
IMPACT Award
Harold Grinspoon
Jewish Book Council
Lifetime Achievement Award
Cynthia Ozick
American Jewish Studies
Celebrate 350 Award
Winner:
The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Princeton University Press)
Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman
Finalist:
Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora (Indiana University Press)
Rebecca Kobrin
Anthologies and Collections
Winner:
The Cambridge Guide to Jewish History, Religion, and Culture (Cambridge University Press)
Judith R. Baskin and Kenneth Seeskin, eds.
Finalists:
Promised Lands: New Jewish American Fiction on Longing and Belonging (Brandeis University Press/UPNE)
Derek Rubin, ed.
Jewish Cultural Studies, Volume 2, Jews at Home: The Domestication of Identity (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)
Simon J. Bronner, ed.
Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir
In Memory of Simon & Shulamith (Sofi) Goldberg
Winner:
Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company)
Ruth Harris
Finalists:
The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (The Toby Press)
Yehuda Avner
Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)
Abigail Green
Backing Into Forward (Nan A. Talese/Random House)
Jules Feiffer
Children's and Young Adult Literature
Winner:
Under a Red Sky: Memoir of a Childhood in Communist Romania (Frances Foster Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Haya Leah Molnar
Finalists:
Rabbi Harvey vs. The Wisdom Kid: A Graphic Novel of Dueling Jewish Folktales in the Wild West (Jewish Lights Publishing)
Steve Sheinkin
The Orphan Rescue (Second Story Press)
Anne Dublin
An Unspeakable Crime: The Prosecution and Persecution of Leo Frank (Carolrhoda Books/Lerner Publishing Group)
Elaine Marie Alphin
Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice
Winner:
Walking Israel: A Personal Search for the Soul of a Nation (Thomas Dunne Books/Macmillan)
Martin Fletcher
Finalists:
The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time (Random House)
Judith Shulevitz
Sacred Strategies: Transforming Synagogues from Functional to Visionary (The Alban Institute)
Isa Aron, Steven M. Cohen, Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ari Y. Kelman
Education and Jewish Identity
Winner:
Sacred Strategies: Transforming Synagogues from Functional to Visionary (The Alban Institute)
Isa Aron, Steven M. Cohen, Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ari Y. Kelman
Finalists:
at 60: Impact and Innovation (National Ramah Commission)
Mitchell Cohen, Jeffrey S. Kress, eds.
Learning and Community: Jewish Supplementary Schools in the Twenty-First Century (Brandeis University Press/UPNE)
Jack Wertheimer
Fiction
JJ Greenberg Memorial Award
Winner:
To the End of the Land (Knopf/Random House)
David Grossman; Jessica Cohen, trans.
Finalists:
The Invisible Bridge (Knopf/Random House)
Julie Orringer
The Instructions (McSweeney's)
Adam Levin
Nemesis (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Philip Roth
History
Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award
Winner:
Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton University Press)
David B. Ruderman
Finalists:
Crown of Aleppo: The Mystery of the Oldest Hebrew Bible Codex (Jewish Publication Society)
Hayim Tawil and Bernard Schneider
The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (The Toby Press)
Yehuda Avner
Untold Tales of the Hasidim: Crisis and Discontent in the History of Hasidim (Brandeis University Press/UPNE)
David Assaf
Holocaust
Winner:
Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp (W. W. Norton & Company)
Christopher R. Browning
Finalists:
The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)
Daniel Blatman; Chaya Galai, trans.
The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos During the Holocaust (Yad Vashem Publishers)
Guy Miron and Shlomit Shulhani, eds.
Illustrated Children's Books
Louis Posner Memorial Award
Winner:
The Rooster Prince of Breslov (Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Ann Redisch Stampler; Eugene Yelchin, illus.
Finalists:
Modeh Ani: A Good Morning Book (EKS Publishing)
Adapted by Sarah Gershman; Kristina Swarner, illus.
Feivel's Flying Horses (Kar-Ben Publishing)
Heidi Smith Hyde; Johanna van der Sterre, illus
Modern Jewish Thought & Experience
Dorot Foundation Award in Memory of Joy Ungerleider Mayerson
Winner:
The Koren Mesorat HaRav Kinot: The Complete Tisha B'Av Service with Commentary by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (Koren Publishers Jerusalem and the Orthodox Union)
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
Finalists:
The Ten Commandments: How Our Most Ancient Moral Text Can Renew Modern Life (Simon & Schuster)
David Hazony
Silver from the Land of Israel: A New Light On The Sabbath And Holidays From Rabbi Abraham Kook (Urim Publications)
Rabbi Chanan Morrison
Outstanding Debut Fiction
Foundation for Jewish Culture's Goldberg Prize
Winner:
Rich Boy (TWELVE Books/Hachette)
Sharon Pomerantz
Finalist:
Displaced Persons (William Morrow/HarperCollins)
Ghita Schwarz
Scholarship
Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award
Winner:
From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking (Stanford University Press)
Dan Miron
Finalists:
Yehuda Halevi (Schocken Books/Nextbook Press)
Hillel Halkin
Glory and Agony: Isaac's Sacrifice and National Narrative (Stanford University Press)
Yael S. Feldman
The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, And Ecclesiastes: A Translation With Commentary (W. W. Norton & Company)
Robert Alter
Orthodox by Design: Judaism, Print Politics, and the ArtScroll Revolution (University of California Press)
Jeremy Stolow
Sephardic Culture
Mimi S. Frank Award in Memory of Becky Levy
Winner:
Yehuda Halevi (Schocken Books/Nextbook Press)
Hillel Halkin
Finalist:
The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks (Stanford University Press)
Marc David Baer
Women's Studies
Barbara Dobkin Award
Winner:
Memoirs of a Grandmother: Scenes from the Cultural History of the Jews of Russia in the Nineteenth Century, Volume One (Stanford University Press)
Pauline Wengeroff; Shulamit S. Magnus, trans.
Finalists:
In Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identities (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers)
Lori Hope Lefkovitz
A Jewish Feminine Mystique?: Jewish Women in Postwar America (Rutgers University Press)
Hasia Diner, Shira Kohn, Rachel Kranson, eds.
Writing Based on Archival Material
The JDC-Herbert Katzki Award
Winner:
The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Random House)
Jonathan Schneer
Finalists:
Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices (TWELVE Books/Hachette)
Noah Feldman
Syrian Jewry in Transition, 1840-1880 (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)
Yaron Harel; Dena Ordan, trans.