Koret Jewish Book Award

The Koret Jewish Book Award is an annual award that recognizes "recently published books on any aspect of Jewish life in the categories of biography/autobiography and literary studies, fiction, history and philosophy/thought published in, or translated into, English." The award was established in 1998 by the Koret Foundation, in cooperation with the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, to increase awareness of the best new Jewish books and their authors.[1]

Professor Samuel Zipperstein of Stanford University oversaw the awards from their creation until 2005, when the Koret Foundation decided to increase public interest in the awards by honoring books that were less academic and more accessible to readers. Jewish Family & Life!, a non-profit organization, was selected to manage the awards. Its CEO, Rabbi Yosef Abramowitz, stated that he hoped to transform the awards into something akin to Oprah's Book Club.[2] The History category and the Biography, Autobiography or Literary Study category were eliminated and replaced with a new category, Jewish Life & Living.

The Koret Jewish Book Award is one of the highest honors for authors of works on Jewish subjects.[3]

Winners

Fiction
2006David GrossmanHer Body Knows[4]
2005Tony EprileThe Persistence of Memory
2004(tie) Aharon MeggedFoiglman [5]
Barbara HonigmannA Love Made Out of Nothing & Zohara's Journey
2003Henryk GrynbergDrohobycz, Drohobycz and Other Stories: True Tales from the Holocaust and Life After
2002Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel (editor)The Complete Works of Isaac Babel[6]
2001Philip RothThe Human Stain[7]
2000A. B. YehoshuaA Journey to the End of the Millennium
1999(tie) Yoel HoffmannKatschen & The Book of Joseph
Brian MortonStarting Out in the Evening

Jewish Life and Living
2006Rochel Berman  Dignity Beyond Death[4]

History (discontinued)
2005Elisheva BaumgartenMothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe
2004Shmuel FeinerThe Jewish Enlightenment[5]
2003Benjamin NathansBeyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia
2002Eli LederhendlerNew York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity -- 1950-1970[6]
2001David B. RudermanJewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry's Construction of Modern Jewish Thought[7]
2000Chava WeisslerVoices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women
1999Miriam BodianHebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam

Philosophy and Thought
2006Rebecca GoldsteinBetraying Spinoza
2005Steven GreenbergWrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition
2004Daniel MattThe Zohar, Pritzker Edition, Volumes I and II[5]
2003Moshe IdelAbsorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation
2002(tie) Samuel HeilmanWhen a Jew Dies: The Ethnography of a Bereaved Son [6]
Ken Koltun-FrommMoses Hess and Modern Jewish Identity
2001Kenneth SeeskinSearching for a Distant God: The Legacy of Maimonides[7]
2000David PattersonAlong the Edge of Annihilation: The Collapse and Recovery of Life in the Holocaust Diary
1999Arnold EisenRethinking Modern Judaism Ritual, Commandment, Community

Biography, Autobiography or Literary Study (discontinued)
2005Amos OzA Tale of Love and Darkness
2004Benjamin HarshavMarc Chagall and His Times: A Documentary Narrative[5]
2003Tikva Frymer-KenskyReading the Women of the Bible
2002Dorothy GallagherHow I Came Into My Inheritance and Other True Stories [6]
2001Cynthia OzickQuarrel & Quandary: Essays[7]
2000Steven NadlerSpinoza: A Life

Children's Literature
2006Howard Schwartz,
Kristina Swarner (illustrator)		Before You Were Born
2005Karen Hesse,
Wendy Watson (illustrator)		The Cats in Krasinski Square

Special Awards

German writer W. G. Sebald received a special Koret award in 2002 for his contributions to literature. Steven J. Zipperstein, the director of the Korets, cited Sebald's novel Austerlitz as a particularly impressive work. Sebald died several months before the awards ceremony.[6]

In 2006, Jonathan Safran Foer's novel Everything is Illuminated received JBooks.com's People's Choice award for the best Jewish work of fiction of the previous decade, as determined by 1,500 voters in an online contest.[4]

References
  1. Koret Jewish Book Award, National Foundation for Jewish Culture. Accessed February 19, 2008.
  2. Siegel, Jennifer (3 March 2006). "Prestigious Book Prize Seeks More Popular Profile". The Forward. Retrieved 23 April 2012.
  3. Rappaport, Scott. "Jewish studies to host lecture by winner of 2005 Koret history book prize", UC Santa Cruz Currents, April 4, 2005. Accessed February 19, 2008. "The Koret Jewish Book Award is considered to be one of the highest honors for authors writing prose on Jewish themes."
  4. Fishkoff, Sue (20 October 2006). "Foer gets top book award". Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. JTA. Retrieved 23 April 2012.
  5. "Berkeley Kabbalah scholar wins Koret Book Award". j. weekly. 5 March 2004. Retrieved 23 April 2012.
  6. Van Gelder, Lawrence (11 April 2002). "Footlights". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 April 2012.
  7. "'Literary luminaries' receive Koret Awards". j. weekly. 23 March 2001. Retrieved 23 April 2012.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.