The folks at The Jewish Book Council just announced the winners of the National Jewish Book Awards.  Cynthia Ozick and Gal Beckerman are among the big winners.  [Watch our interview with Beckerman here]

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:

Ramah 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/NextbookPress)
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.

The post Gal Beckerman And Cynthia Ozick Among The 2010 National Jewish Book Award Winners appeared first on Jewcy.

While we loved fiction in 2010, it’s the year’s non-fiction books that gave us a chance to really spread out and move from drunken adventures across Europe on justification as to why we didn’t continue our studies in Russian literature on an academic level.

1. And The Pursuit of Happiness by Maira Kalman

It may have not been the most inspiring year for America, but Ms. Kalman’s book of drawings made us want to revisit everything that is truly great about this country.  One of the most beautiful books to come out in a long time.

2. Everything Is Going to Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour by Rachel Shukert

I think we may have gotten a little ahead of ourselves when we said this was the funniest book of the year, considering it had just come out.

Thank goodness for end of year lists where we can look back and say we were right.

3. The Possessed by Elif Batuman

If you ever thought you wanted to study Russian writers like Isaac Babel or Tolstoy for a living, read this amazing book first.

4. How did you get This Number by Sloane Crosley

2010 might not be remembered as the year that Sloane Crosley bucked the “sophomore slump” label, but it really should be.  Nearly as funny as I was Told There’d Be Cake, and much more confident.

5. Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus

Of all of the revolutions to bubble up out of the musical underground in the 1990s, the Riot Grrrl movement was the one whose voice was the loudest, and who had the biggest and arguably most important impact.  Sara Marcus spared no detail in this account, and it deserves your attention.

6. When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone by Gal Beckerman

A work that was enjoyable to read, and of the utmost importance.  The world owes Mr. Beckerman a thanks for making this amazing book happen.

7. I Don’t Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I’ve Dated by Julie Klausner

Since the Sex and the City and the creepy culture it seems to have created is slowly going the way of the dinosaur, we vote for Julie Klausner’s book to become the new handbook to teach people exactly how bloody the dating battlefield of New York has become.

8. And the Heart Says Whatever by Emily Gould

We hereby enact a law stating that no longer should Emily Gould be known as the ex-Gawker writer who had the cover story in the New York Times Magazine.  She shall now be recognized as the clever memoirist who knows that nobody is innocent–including herself–and it’s all thanks to this superb memoir.

9. Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian by Avi Steinberg

We like anybody who works in a prison library for two years.  If they can write a memoir as good as this one about it, we like them even more.

10. Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes by Stephen Sondheim

I don’t feel like we really need to give any reasons for why this is on the list.

Also of note: Listen to This by Alex Ross, The Road by Vasily Grossman, Half Empty by David Rakoff,

The post Jewcy’s Top 10 Non-Fiction Books Of 2010 appeared first on Jewcy.

• Gal Beckerman, Annie Cohen-Solal, Barry Hannah, Joshua Ferris, and a bunch of other writers and their books make it to The New Yorker’s 2010 “best of” list.

• Howard Jacobson finds himself on Slate’s list.

• America Abroad Media speaks to David Grossman about his newest novel, To the End of the Land, and the complexities of life in one of the world’s most contentious regions.

• Avi Steinberg guest blogs over at the Jewish Book Council.

• Sam Lipsyte gives a roundup of things he’s read in 2010 at The Millions.

• A Fran Lebowitz wish list.

The post Weekly Yiderati: Jews Dominate “Best Of” Lists, David Grossman Videos, Fran Lebowitz Lists Avi Steinberg Blogs And More appeared first on Jewcy.