Twenty-five AJS members were among the scholars and authors honored by the Jewish Book Council as part of the 2018 National Jewish Book Awards. Nine AJS members were winners in their categories, and another sixteen AJS members were finalists.
AJS members were honored in 12 of 17 award categories, including American Jewish Studies, Biography, Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice, Jewish Education and Identity, History, the Holocaust, Modern Jewish Thought and Experience, Poetry, Scholarship, Sephardic Culture, Women’s Studies, and Writing Based on Archival Material. In five of the categories, all winners and finalists were AJS members; these categories included American Jewish Studies, the Holocaust, Scholarship, Sephardic Culture, and Writing Based on Archival Material.
Omer Bartov for Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (Simon and Schuster) in the category Holocaust, in memory of Ernest W. Michel
Ariel Burger for Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) in the category Biography, in memory of Sara Berenson Stone
Jonathan Decter for Dominion Built of Praise: Panegyric and Legitimacy Among Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean (University of Pennsylvania Press) in the category Sephardic Culture, Mimi S. Frank Award in memory of Becky Levy
Rebecca Erbelding for Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America's Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe (Penguin Random House – Doubleday) in the category Writing Based on Archival Material, the JDC-Herbert Katzki Award
Erika Meitner for Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, LTD) in the category Poetry, Berru Award in memory of Ruth and Bernie Weinflash
Alan L. Mittleman for Does Judaism Condone Violence? Holiness and Ethics in the Jewish Tradition (Princeton University Press) in the category Modern Jewish Thought and Experience, Dorot Foundation Award in Memory of Joy Ungerleider Mayerson
Jack Wertheimer for The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice Their Religion Today (Princeton University Press) in the category American Jewish Studies, Celebrate 350 Award
Barry Scott Wimpfheimer for The Talmud: A Biography (Princeton University Press) in the category Jewish Education and Identity, in memory of Dorothy Kripke
Marcin Wodziński for Historical Atlas of Hasidism (with cartography by Waldemar Spallek) (Princeton University Press) in the category Scholarship, Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award
Mara H. Benjamin for The Obligated Self (Indiana University Press) in the category Women’s Studies, Barbara Dobkin Award
Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein for The Holocaust and North Africa (Stanford University Press) in the category Sephardic Culture, Mimi S. Frank Award in memory of Becky Levy
Michael Brenner for In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea (Princeton University Press) in the category History, the Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award
Samuel Hayim Brody for Martin Buber's Theopolitics (Indiana University Press) in the category Modern Jewish Thought and Experience, Dorot Foundation Award in Memory of Joy Ungerleider Mayerson
Eric L. Goldstein and Deborah R. Weiner for On Middle Ground: A History of the Jews of Baltimore (Johns Hopkins University Press)
Daniel Judson for Pennies for Heaven: The History of American Synagogues and Money (Brandeis University Press) in the category American Jewish Studies, Celebrate 350 Award
Lynn Kaye for Time in the Babylonian Talmud: Natural and Imaged Times in Jewish Law and Narrative (Cambridge University Press) in the category Scholarship, Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award
Shira Klein, Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism (Cambridge University Press) in the category History, the Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award, and in the category Writing Based on Archival Material, the JDC-Herbert Katzki Award
Samira K. Mehta for Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States (University of North Carolina Press) in the category American Jewish Studies, Celebrate 350 Award
Vered Noam for Shifting Images of the Hasmoneans: Second Temple Legends and Their Reception in Josephus and Rabbinic Literature (Oxford University Press) in the category Scholarship, Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award
Shachar M. Pinsker for A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture (New York University Press) in the category Modern Jewish Thought and Experience, Dorot Foundation Award in Memory of Joy Ungerleider Mayerson
Hannah Schwadron for The Case of the Sexy Jewess: Dance, Gender and Jewish Joke-work in US Pop Culture (Oxford University Press) in the category Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice, Myra H. Kraft Memorial Award
Ora Wiskind–Elper for Hasidic Commentary on the Torah (Liverpool University Press) in the category Scholarship, Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award
Steven J. Zipperstein for Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History (Liveright/W. W. Norton & Company) in the category History, the Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award
For a complete list of all 2018 National Jewish Book Awards winners and finalists, please visit the Jewish Book Council website.
