Koret Jewish Book Awards Move to San Francisco

Business Wire, Feb 9, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO -- For the first time since its inception seven years ago, the Koret Jewish Book Awards ceremony will be held in San Francisco this year as the centerpiece of a literary arts "mosaic" scheduled April 9 to 12 at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco (JCCSF).

Awarding $10,000 prizes in fiction, biography, philosophy, history, and -- for the first time this year -- children's literature, the annual program has been held in New York until now in order to build its reputation among publishers, agents, publicists and writers largely based on the East Coast. Now established as one of the country's most prestigious award programs for Jewish writing, the Koret Foundation is bringing the stellar winners' rosters -- which in past years have included Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Daniel Matt, and A.B. Yehoshua, among others -- to San Francisco, where they will make public appearances in addition to speaking at the invitation-only awards ceremony scheduled for 7 p.m. on April 11 at JCCSF's Kanbar Theater.

"Our goal is to share the talents of these winning writers with our own Bay Area community, and to encourage our Jewish community to engage with the best of Jewish books produced in the last year," said book awards director Prof. Steven J. Zipperstein, director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University.

The awards ceremony will also include a program -- "Faith, Politics, and the Jews: An Exchange Between Hillel Halkin and Anne Roiphe" -- presenting two leading intellectuals on one of the most contentious and perplexing issues in contemporary culture. Halkin, an Israeli, is a distinguished translator and a frequent contributor to "Commentary" and "The New Republic." He is the author of "Letters to an American Jewish Friend," and "Across the Sabbath River." Roiphe, a well-known American novelist, wrote "Secrets of the City" and the widely discussed, fictional exploration of American Jewish Orthodoxy, "Lovingkindness."

Book award categories and finalists are:

Biography, Autobiography, and Literary Studies

"Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode" by Robert S. Kawashima (Indiana University Press)

"A Tale of Love and Darkness" by Amos Oz, translated from the Hebrew by Nicolas de Lange (Harcourt, Inc.)

"Autobiographical Jews: Essays in Jewish Self-Fashioning" by Michael Stanislawski (University of Washington Press)

"Nine Suitcases" by Bela Zsolt, translated from the Hungarian by Ladislaus Lob (Schocken Books)

Children's Literature

"Cats in Krasinski Square" by Karen Hesse, illustrated by Wendy Watson (Scholastic Books)

"Daniel in the Lions' Den" by Jean Marzollo (Little, Brown)

"Baby Babka, the Gorgeous Genius" by Jane Breskin Zalben, illustrated by Victoria Chess (Clarion Books)

Fiction

"The Persistence of Memory" by Tony Eprile (W. W. Norton & Company)

"Heir to the Glimmering World" by Cynthia Ozick (Houghton Mifflin Company)

"The First Desire" by Nancy Reisman, (Pantheon Books)

"The Plot Against America" by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin Company)

History

"Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe" by Elisheva Baumgarten (Princeton University Press)

"A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Spain" by Mark D. Meyerson (Princeton University Press)

"American Judaism" by Jonathan D. Sarna (Yale University Press)

"Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires" by Sarah Abrevaya Stein (Indiana University Press)

Philosophy and Thought

"Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works" by Herbert A. Davidson (Oxford University Press)

"Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition" by Rabbi Steven Greenberg, (University of Wisconsin Press)

"The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought" by Aaron W. Hughes (Indiana University Press)

A special award for translation and commentary will be presented to Robert Alter for his book, "The Five Books of Moses," published by W.W. Norton & Company.

Koret also presents an award to a Young Writer (under 40) on Jewish Themes, which includes a $25,000 cash prize and a three-month residency at Stanford University, to write, teach, and conduct research. Finalists for this prize are Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Tim Bradford, Melanie Challenger, Joshua Cohen, Nan Cohen, Lou Cove, Joshua Fagan, Aliza Fogelson, Victoria Haggblom-Arrias, and Adam Langer.

JCCSF's Literary Arts Mosaic includes an intimate evening Saturday, April 9 at 8 p.m. with Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), one of the most celebrated writers of our time, whose work has exploded onto the silver screen. Handler will discuss what inspires him, what he aspires to, and what makes his writing Jewish.

On Sunday, April 10, JCCSF presents selected Koret Jewish Book Award winners in fields that include biography, fiction, philosophy, history, and children's literature, as well as an emerging young writer on Jewish themes. A brunch-and-learn study session and a special opportunity for young children and their parents are featured events in this day-long inaugural literary arts mosaic.