The Jewish Book Council celebrated 75 years of presenting the National Jewish Book Awards with a gala on March 25. The event celebrated this year’s winning authors, as well as their agents, editors, and publishers, for telling Jewish stories in fresh, powerful books.

Elisa Spungen Bildner, president of the council, began by telling the 300 guests gathered at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan a Hasidic story once shared in a book by Elie Wiesel. Its theme is that stories have saved the Jewish people generation after generation; it concludes with the declaration, "God loves stories."

Jewish Book Council CEO Naomi Firestone-Teeter said the annual awards have always "honored and given visibility to the urgent realities that face the Jewish people, and at the very same time, they've celebrated the richness, creativity, and vitality of Jewish life. That duality is the essence of the Jewish people. We also know there's no single Jewish story."

Winning words

The gala host Jonah Platt—a musician, community activist, host of the podcast Being Jewish—invited several of the winning authors to the microphone for lightning rounds of questions about their works.

Dani James, translator of Return to the Place I Never Left (Wayne State Univ.) by Belgian Holocaust survivor Tobias Schiff, spoke about why she wanted to bring the book, which won the award for Holocaust memoir, into English from the original Flemish. James, a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, said Schiff's story "made every reader a witness to his experience."

Zeeva Bukai’s The Anatomy of Exile (Delphinium Books), which took the prize for debut fiction, deals with Israelis and Palestinians in exile, portraying a fraught relationship in perilous times for both groups. Bukai told the audience she made it a very specific story about love and possibilities, adiding, "I think what is happening feels extraordinarily painful at this time, but I had written the story with the idea that hopefully things can change at some point."

Historian Pamela Nadell, whose book, Antisemitism: An American Tradition (W.W. Norton) took honors in American Jewish Studies, tracked Jewish hatred here back four centuries. She described how she began her research after the Tree of Life Synagogue murders in 2018 abruptly reminded her that she had not really paid attention to antisemitism. Once she did, she said, it became clear this virulent prejudice is "not an aberration."

Sarah Hurwitz, a hospital chaplain, took the award for contemporary Jewish life and practice with As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us (HarperOne). The daughter of Soviet Jewish émigrés, she says in both Russia and in America today, "what it means to show up publicly as a Jewish voice sometimes takes courage." She gave her book such an unapologetically emphatic title because, she said, she feels "a real sense of joy that it is such a gift to be part of this people."

Highest honors

There were numerous awards for every aspect of Jewish life and every age, chosen by 120 judges from more than 700 applicants. (A full list of honorees and finalists, first announced in February, is here). The evening built up to a finale—the recognition of the Book of the Year, Hostage (Harper Influence) by Eli Sharabi.

David Everett, representing the Everett Family Foundation, called Sharabi to the mic, describing the book as the first memoir released by an Israeli captive of October 7, with a message that "needs to be heard far and wide."

Eli began his remarks by dedicating the award to the memory of his wife, their two daughters, and his brother, all killed by Hamas, who held him for 491 days.

Sharabi called his book "the story of a dark and painful moment in our history, but it is also a story about resilience, about humanity, and about the possibility of hope, even in the most difficult circumstances. My wish is for this book to help someone feel less alone, to find strength, or to better understand the world around them. And that's why the work of the Jewish Book Council and this publishing community is so important."

He thanked all the people in publishing who supported his book and all who upheld him in the worst of times. Finally, he said, "To the readers around the world, thank you, because once a book leaves the hand of its author, it really belongs to its readers."