Award

National Jewish Book Award

75 years tracked (1949–2025), 753 entries total.

The National Jewish Book Award was established in 1950 to recognize outstanding Jewish Literature. It is awarded by the Jewish Book Council, a New-York based non-profit organization dedicated to the support and promotion of Jewish literature since 1944.

2024

10/7: 100 Human Stories
Lee Yaron
Winner
101 Treasures from the National Library of Israel
Raquel Ukeles, Hezi Amiur, Yoel Finkelman, Stefan Litt, and Samuel Thrope
Winner
A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews
Shaul Kelner
Winner
Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity
Simcha Gross
Winner
Entwined Homelands, Empowered Diasporas: Hispanic Moroccan Jews and Their Globalizing Community
Aviad Moreno
Winner
Finn and Ezra’s Bar Mitzvah Time Loop
Joshua S. Levy
Winner
Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig
Jordan D. Rosenblum
Winner
Holy Rebellion: Religious Feminism and the Transformation of Judaism and Women’s Rights in Israel
Ronit Irsahi and Tanya Zion-Waldoks
Winner
Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw the Angels Fall
Christophe Lebold
Winner
Night Owls
A. R. Vishny
Winner
Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish
Hannah Pollin-Galay
Winner
Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO Effort to Know the Enemy
Jonathan Marc Gribetz
Winner
Sharing Shalom
Danielle Sharkan
Winner
Songs for the Brokenhearted
Ayelet Tsabari
Winner
Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life
Joshua Leifer
Winner
The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule
Paris Papamichos Chronakis
Winner
The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival and Hope on Israel’s Borderlands
Amir Tibon
Winner
The Hebrew Teacher
Maya Arad
Winner
The Last Dekrepitzer
Howard Langer
Winner
The Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic: Rereading the Women of the Talmud
Gila Fine
Winner
The Safekeep
Yael van der Wouden
Winner
The Story of Your Obstinate Survival
Daniel Khalastchi
Winner
Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew
Emmanuel Acho
Winner
Warsaw Testament
Samuel Kassow
Winner

2019

A Mortuary of Books: The Rescue of Jewish Culture after the Holocaust
Elisabeth Gallas with Alex Skinner (trans.)
Winner
America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today
Pamela Nadell
Winner
Antisemitism: Here and Now
Deborah Lipstadt
Winner
Deaf Republic
Ilya Kaminsky
Winner
Edith Halpert, The Downtown Gallery, and the Rise of American Art
Rebecca Shaykin
Winner
Fly Already: Stories
Etgar Keret
Winner
Gittel’s Journey: An Ellis Island Story
Lesléa Newman
Winner
How to Fight Anti-Semitism
Bari Weiss
Winner
Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love
Dani Shapiro
Winner
Jewish Cuisine in Hungary. A Cultural History with 83 Authentic Recipes
Andras Koerner
Winner
Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets
Elissa Bemporad
Winner
Lethal Provocation: The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria
Joshua Cole
Winner
Naamah
Sarah Blake
Winner
Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic
Eric Lawee
Winner
Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement
Naomi Seidman
Winner
Someday We Will Fly
Rachel DeWoskin
Winner
The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism
Kenneth D. Wald
Winner
The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America
Daniel Okrent
Winner
The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught In Between
Michael Dobbs
Winner
The World That We Knew
Alice Hoffman
Winner
Touched with Fire: Morris B. Abram and the Battle against Racial and Religious Discrimination
David E. Lowe
Winner
What We Talk about When We Talk about Hebrew
Naomi B. Sokoloff and Nancy E. Berg
Winner

2009

Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976
Norman L. Kleeblatt
Winner
Celebrating the Jewish Year: The Spring and Summer Holidays: Passover, Shavuot, The Omer, Tisha B'Av
Paul Steinberg
Winner
Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America
Beryl Satter
Winner
Genesis: The Book of Beginnings
Jonathan Sacks
Winner
Gratitude
Joseph Kertes
Winner
JPS illustrated children's Bible
Ellen Frankel
Winner
Louis D. Brandeis: A Life
Melvin Urofsky
Winner
Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn
Ayala Fader
Winner
Rethinking European Jewish History
Jeremy Cohen
Winner
Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End
Daniel Gordis
Winner
Subversive Sequels in the Bible
Judy Klitsner
Winner
The Book of Seventy (Pitt Poetry Series)
Alicia Ostriker
Winner
The Fall of a Sparrow: The Life and Times of Abba Kovner
Dina Porat
Winner
The Holocaust in the Soviet Union
Yitzhak Arad
Winner
The Other Half of Life: A Novel Based on the True Story of the MS St. Louis
Kim Ablon Whitney
Winner
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume 1, Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA) (A & B)
Geoffrey P. Megargee
Winner
We Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel's Jews from Arab Lands
Rachel Shabi
Winner
We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945-1962
Hasia R. Diner
Winner