2013 National Jewish Book Award Winners and Finalists

New York, January 15, 2014 - The Jewish Book Council announced the winners of the 63rd Annual National Jewish Book Awards today.  The Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year Award was given to Like Dreamers by Yossi Klein Halevi (HarperCollins), in which history comes alive in Halevi's brilliant depiction of the parachuters who liberated the Kotel in 1967, as well as the Suez Canal.  The Koren Pesach Machzor by Former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (Koren Publishers Jerusalem), a skillful guide to the meaning and practice of Passover was selected for the Modern Jewish Thought and Experience Dorot Foundation Award.  My Promised Land by Ari Shavit (Spiegel & Grau), a look back at the origins of the Jewish state that also shifts its sight forward into Israel's uncertain future, received the Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award in History.  The American Jewish Studies Celebrate 350 Award was given to FDR and the Jews (Harvard University Press), Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman's exploration of the controversy over what FDR did (or failed to do) to protect the Jews of Europe during the Third Reich.  The winners of the 2013 National Jewish Book Awards will be honored on March 5, 2014 at a gala awards ceremony at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. The ceremony, which begins at 8:00PM, is free and open to the public. Press may reserve their seat for the awards ceremony by contacting Mimi Frank at the Jewish Book Council at mimi@jewishbooks.org.  Now in its 63rd year, the National Jewish Book Awards is the longest-running North American awards program in the field of Jewish literature. Established to recognize outstanding books of Jewish interest in various categories, it has earned its place as one of the nation's premiere literary honors. "It's immensely gratifying to see the significance of this award grow over the years," says Carolyn Starman Hessel, Director of the Jewish Book Council.  Awards will be named this year in seventeen categories. A complete list of the 2013 National Jewish Book Award winners and finalists, as well as additional information, is available here.