James McBride and Elizabeth Graver win National Jewish Book Awards
Anne Berest's THE POSTCARD was a finalist in the Book Club category.
This morning, the Jewish Book Council announced the winners of the 73rd National Jewish Book Awards as part of the JCC’s Books That Changed My Life festival in Manhattan.
The National Jewish Book Awards is one of the Jewish Book Council’s longest-running programs and “provides a terrific opportunity for authors who write exceptional books with Jewish content to be recognized,” said Elisa Spungen Bildner, president of the JBC. “The awards bring to the fore books that may give readers one more way, perhaps a new way, to connect with their Judaism.”
This year JBC worked with over 100 judges to consider over 650 submissions in several categories.
James McBride (author of The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother, the National Book Award-winner Good Lord Bird, and Deacon King Kong) won his first two National Jewish Book Awards, the JJ Greenberg Memorial Award for Fiction and The Miller Family Book Club Award, for his novel The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (Riverhead Books).
McBride’s book is partly based on the life of his Jewish grandmother, who was born and raised in a small town in Virginia and worked in her family’s store. His mother was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family but married Rev. Andrew McBride and converted to Christianity. McBride was raised in the church, but with Jewish family members, he learned a great deal about Judaism and Jewish culture.
“I’m proud of my Jewish history,” he said back in 1997, shortly after The Color of Water was published. “Technically, I guess you could say I’m Jewish since my mother was Jewish…but she converted [to Christianity]. So the question is for theologians to answer. It doesn’t cause me one drop of blood, sweat or tears. I just get up in the morning happy to be living.”
In related news, the Reference and User Services Association, a division of the American Library Association, has named The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store the winner of the 2024 Sophie Brody Medal. The Medal is given to encourage, recognize and commend outstanding achievement in Jewish literature. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store “tells the story of the residents of Chicken Hill, a poor neighborhood in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. The Jewish immigrant and African Americans living there work to support each other during adversity, showing the importance of community and love” according to the announcement.
The finalists for the Book Club award were The Postcard by Anne Berest (my choice for Best Book of 2023), Adam Unrehearsed by Don Futterman, The Wolf Hunt by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, and Once We Were Home by Jennifer Rosner.
Ruth Madievsky won the Goldberg Prize for Debut Fiction for her novel All-Night Pharmacy (Catapult). Elizabeth Graver received the Sepahardic Culture Mimi S. Frank Award for her novel Kantika (Metropolitan Books). Kantika is the story of Rebecca Cohen, the feisty daughter of a privileged Sephardic family in early 20th-century Istanbul. When WWI and anti-Jewish policies cause the Cohens to lose their wealth, they are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew. Rebecca adapts by reinventing her life and herself. Moving from Spain to Cuba to New York for an arranged second marriage, she faces her greatest challenge―her disabled stepdaughter, Luna, whose strength and spirit equal her own and whose challenges pit new family against old.
This year, JBC has partnered with independent bookstores to celebrate the 73rd National Jewish Book Award winners.
The winners will be honored at an in-person ceremony on March 26. The hosts will be authors Alison Rose Greenberg and Bess Kalb.
JBC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating, enriching, and strengthening the community through Jewish literature. JBC reaches over half a million readers with its digital presence, in addition to working with over 260 touring authors each year, creating resources for over 2,800 book clubs, facilitating over 1,400 events, presenting the National Jewish Book Awards, co-hosting the popular literary series Unpacking the Book: Jewish Writers in Conversation, and producing its annual print publication, Paper Brigade. The Jewish Book Awards were established in 1950 in order to recognize outstanding works of Jewish literature. They are the oldest awards of their kind.
Past notable winners include Deborah Lipstadt, Bernard Malamud, Michael Oren, Chaim Potok, Philip Roth, Elie Wiesel, Jonathan Safran Foer, Colum McCann, and Dara Horn.