Eli Sharabi’s memoir “Hostage,” recounting his expertise in Hamas captivity after the Oct. 7, 2023 assault, has been named E-book of the Yr by the Nationwide Jewish E-book Awards, organizers introduced Wednesday.
The awards, offered by the Jewish E-book Council and regarded among the many most prestigious honors in Jewish literature, acknowledge excellent English-language books of Jewish curiosity throughout dozens of classes. Based in 1950, this system is the longest-running North American awards initiative dedicated to Jewish books.
Sharabi’s memoir, which particulars his abduction from Kibbutz Be’eri and the greater than 12 months he spent in captivity, turned a bestseller in Israel and was later launched in English in the USA.
“This recognition means a lot to me, not solely personally, however for the reminiscence of my household and all these we misplaced,” Sharabi mentioned in a press release. “’Hostage’ is my testimony, a narrative of my survival, written so others might bear witness. I hope it helps be sure that what occurred isn’t forgotten.”
Different main winners replicate the breadth of latest Jewish writing, spanning scholarship, fiction, memoir and kids’s literature.
In American Jewish research, Pamela S. Nadell gained for “Antisemitism, an American Custom,” a have a look at the varieties antisemitism took within the nation from the early Dutch settlers to the current day. The Russian-born journalist Julia Ioffe took the autobiography and memoir prize for “Motherland: A Feminist Historical past of Fashionable Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy.” The ebook blends memoir, journalism and historical past to look at trendy Russia by way of the lens of girls’s experiences.
Jack Fairweather’s “The Prosecutor: One Man’s Battle to Deliver Nazis to Justice,” the story of a Jewish choose and Holocaust survivor from Stuttgart who pursued Nazi perpetrators in post-war Germany, gained the biography award.
In “Antisemitism, an American Custom,” historian Pamela Nadell chronicles how hatred of the Jews was a persistent theme in each period of U.S. historical past. (W.H. Norton)
Fiction honors went to Allison Epstein for “Fagin the Thief,” a retelling of the Dickens novel “Oliver Twist” from the angle of its Jewish antihero, and Zeeva Bukai obtained the debut fiction prize for “The Anatomy of Exile,” concerning the multigenerational echoes of a secret love affair between an Israeli Jewish lady and a Palestinian poet.
The Hebrew fiction in translation class acknowledged “Canine,” by Yishay Ishi Ron, translated by Yardenne Greenspan, which additionally earned a variety within the ebook membership class. The novella’s protagonist is an Israeli fight veteran haunted by his service in one of many Gaza campaigns previous to Oct. 7.
This 12 months’s awards arrive because the Jewish discourse has been reshaped by the aftermath of Oct. 7, a worldwide surge in antisemitism and the polarizing debate over Israel that adopted. Final 12 months’s winner for ebook of the 12 months, “10/7: 100 Human Tales” by Lee Yaron, was additionally an account of the assaults and their aftermath.
Jewish anxieties in gentle of Oct. 7 are the topic of Sarah Hurwitz’s “As A Jew: Reclaiming Our Story From These Who Blame, Disgrace, and Attempt to Erase Us,” which gained within the up to date Jewish life and apply class. Hurwitz, a speechwriter within the Obama administration, offers a primer on Jewish historical past, texts and practices so as to counter what she calls misinformation amongst Jews, their allies and their critics.
“Particularly amid rising antisemitism and Jewish authors going through elevated scrutiny, Jewish books have the ability to create and maintain neighborhood,” mentioned Naomi Firestone-Teeter, CEO of Jewish E-book Council, in a press release asserting the winners.
In “Hostage,” Sharabi writes concerning the terror of his abduction and the each day battle to outlive after Hamas fighters stormed Kibbutz Be’eri. He would spend 491 days in captivity, a lot of it in tunnels beneath Gaza, earlier than being launched on Feb. 8, 2025, as a part of a negotiated deal. All through the ordeal, Sharabi clung to the hope of rescue, writing: ‘I refuse to let myself drown in ache. I’m surviving. I’m a hostage. Within the coronary heart of Gaza. A stranger in an odd land. Within the residence of a Hamas-supporting household. And I’m getting out of right here. I’ve to. I’m getting out of right here. I’m coming residence.”
Different nonfiction winners included Elissa Bemporad’s “Jews within the Soviet Union: A Historical past: Revolution, Civil Struggle, and New Methods of Life, 1917–1930, Quantity 1,” which gained in historical past; Anna Hájková’s “Individuals With out Historical past are Mud: Queer Need within the Holocaust,” honored in Holocaust research alongside translator William Ross Jones; and Tobias Schiff’s “Return to the Place I By no means Left,” which gained the Holocaust memoir award, with Dani James acknowledged for translation.
Awards recognizing up to date Jewish thought and scholarship included Lawrence Grossman’s “Residing in Each Worlds: Fashionable Orthodox Judaism in the USA, 1945–2025,” and Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach’s “A Lady Is Chargeable for The whole lot: Jewish Ladies in Early Fashionable Europe,” which gained a number of prizes, together with scholarship and ladies’s research.
In kids’s and younger readers’ classes, Alison Goldberg’s “The Remembering Candle,” illustrated by Selina Alko, gained for youngsters’s image ebook; Janice Shapiro’s “Honoria: A Fortuitous Friendship” took the prize for center grade literature; and Eugene Yelchin’s graphic memoir “I Want I Didn’t Should Inform You This” gained in younger grownup literature.
In “As a Jew,” Sarah Hurwitz argues how Jews can reclaim a practice that has too typically been formed by others’ prejudices and ignorance. (HarperOne)
Different winners embrace Miriam Udel’s “Fashionable Jewish Worldmaking Via Yiddish Youngsters’s Literature,” which gained in schooling and Jewish id; Raegan Steinberg, Alexandre Cohen and Evelyne Eng’s “Arthurs: Residence of the Nosh,” honored in meals writing and cookbooks; Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s “Golden Threads,” which gained for Sephardic tradition; Elizabeth E. Imber’s “Unsure Empire,” for writing primarily based on archival materials; and Aharon Shabtai’s “Requiem & Different Poems,” translated by Peter Cole, which gained the poetry award.
The winners will probably be honored at an awards ceremony in New York subsequent month hoisted by the entertainer Jonah Platt. On the ceremony, journalist Sam Feedman will probably be offered with the council’s Mentorship Award, named in honor of Carolyn Starman Hessel, longtime former director of the JBC. Freedman, a former New York Instances reporter and professor on the Columbia Journalism College, taught a preferred course that helped over 100 college students flip their concepts into books, together with “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Wrestle to Save Soviet Jewry,” Gal Beckerman’s 2010 historical past of the Soviet Jewry motion.
“Sam Freedman modified my life as a author,” Beckerman mentioned in a press release. “He believed in me earlier than I believed in myself, pushed me to take my work critically, and opened doorways I didn’t even know existed. With powerful love and deep generosity, he guided me by way of the daunting strategy of writing a ebook as if it had been his personal. What he did for me, he did for dozens of writers.”
