Koret Jewish Book Awards Winners Named Israeli Writer A. B. Yehoshua to Speak at Awards Ceremony

San Francisco, Calif., March 7, 2003 — In Tikva Frymer-Kensky's new book, Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories, biblical women emerge as victors, victims, virgins, or voices of God, each image capturing a critical feature of ancient Israel's sense of itself.

"Like these women, the people of Israel can persevere to preserve their destiny. The gifts of faith, persuasion, persistence, and cunning can allow the nation of Israel to be victorious when surrounded by, besieged by, and even conquered by more powerful nations," writes Frymer-Kensky, whose book will be honored with a Koret Jewish Book Award.

Frymer-Kensky's work takes the prize in the Biography, Autobiography, and Literary Studies category of the fifth annual Koret Jewish Book Awards for books published in 2002. Each of the authors of the winning books in this and three other categories — Fiction, History, and Philosophy and Thought — will be awarded a $10,000 prize.

The Awards ceremony honoring the winners will take place in New York City on April 7, 2003, where famed Israeli author and former Koret Jewish Book Award winner A. B. Yehoshua will speak on the theme "Israeli Culture, Jewish Culture, and the Future." His book Journey to the End of the Millennium won the Koret Jewish Book Award in Fiction in 1999.

In addition to Reading the Women of the Bible (Schocken Books), three other distinguished books will be honored. The Fiction category winner is Drohobycz, Drohobycz and Other Stories: True Tales from the Holocaust and Life After by Henryk Grynberg, translated by Alicia Nitecki and edited by Theodosia Robertson (Penguin Books), a collection of interlinked tales of the Holocaust and Jewish life afterwards in Poland. Grynberg, who lives in the U.S. but has continued to write in his native Polish, is a widely read and respected author in Poland as well as in this country.

In the History category, the winning book is Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia by Benjamin Nathans (University of California Press). It is a major reassessment of Jewish life in the capital of imperial Russia, a community of mostly Russian-speaking Jews who were drastically different from the bulk of Russian Jewry at the time.

The winner in the Philosophy and Thought category is Moshe Idel's Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation (Yale University Press), a major interpretative work reassessing the meaning of Jewish mysticism by a Hebrew University scholar widely considered the leading living interpreter of the Kabbalah.

The Awards were established in 1998 by the San Francisco-based Koret Foundation to highlight the finest Jewish writing now available in the English language, according to award chair, Stanford University professor Steven J. Zipperstein.

"The Koret Book Awards, now a critical fixture of Jewish literary and intellectual life, give heightened visibility to the best Jewish books at a time of exceptional creativity. They provide a crucial signpost to readers, to editors, and reviewers as to whose work truly stands out, which writers and scholars deserve special attention, and whose future work should be nurtured with special care," says Zipperstein, who is the Daniel E. Koshland professor of Jewish Culture and History and co-director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University.

At the Awards ceremony, the winner of a new prize for a writer age 35 or under, the Koret Young Writer on Jewish Themes Award, will also be honored. The winner — who will spend a quarter in residence at Stanford University — will be announced in March.

Books were nominated by their publishers, and finalists were selected by four panels of distinguished scholars and writers chaired by Frances Malino (Biography, Autobiography and Literary Studies), Alvin H. Rosenfeld (Fiction), Elisheva Carlebach (History), and Ellen Umansky (Philosophy and Thought). Each category's judges selected two or three finalists in addition to a winner.

Finalists in the Biography, Autobiography, and Literary Studies category were A Jew in America: My Life and a People's Struggle for Identity by Arthur Hertzberg (HarperSanFrancisco); Gershom Scholem: A Life in Letters, 1914-1982 by Gershom Gerhard Scholem, edited and translated by Anthony David Skinner (Harvard University Press); and Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland Before the Holocaust, edited by Jeffrey Shandler (Yale University Press).

Finalists in the Fiction category were The Boxer by Jurek Becker (Arcade Publishing); The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Apt. 3W by Gabriel Brownstein (W. W. Norton & Co.); and The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart (Riverhead Books).

The finalists in the History category were Jews in France During World War II by Renee Poznanski (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England) and Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. by Seth Schwartz (Princeton University Press).

In the fourth category, Philosophy and Thought, the finalists were Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought in America by Michael Morgan (Oxford University Press) and The Contemplative Soul: Hebrew Poetry and Philosophic Theory in Medieval Spain by Adena Tanenbaum (Brill).

The Koret Jewish Book Awards were created in cooperation with the New York-based National Foundation for Jewish Culture.

Background on Winners and Finalists

In the Biography, Autobiography and Literary Studies category, the winner is:

  • Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories by Tikva Frymer-Kensky (Schocken Books): Biblical women emerge as victors, victims, virgins, or voices of God, each image capturing a critical feature of ancient Israel's sense of itself

Finalists:

  • A Jew in America: My Life and a People's Struggle for Identity by Arthur Hertzberg (HarperSanFrancisco): The life story of a rabbi and intellectual wrestling with American Jewish culture, Israeli politics, and the complexities of contemporary Jewish identity
  • Gershom Scholem: A Life in Letters, 1914-1982 by Gershom Gerhard Scholem, edited and translated by Anthony David Skinner (Harvard University Press): A superb collection, newly translated into English, by the master of Kabbalah interpretation, and a first-rate, vivid letter-writer
  • Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland Before the Holocaust, edited by Jeffrey Shandler (Yale University Press): A startling, deeply intriguing collection of memoirs by Polish Jewish youth of the 1930s

In the Fiction category, the winner is:

  • Drohobycz, Drohobycz and Other Stories: True Tales from the Holocaust and Life After by Henryk Grynberg, translated by Alicia Nitecki and edited by Theodosia Robertson (Penguin Books): A collection of interlinked tales of the Holocaust and Jewish life afterwards in Poland by an original, singularly perceptive witness

Finalists:

  • The Boxer by Jurek Becker (Arcade Publishing): A man who survived a Nazi concentration camp searches for his lost son and tries to rebuild his life in East Berlin
  • The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Apt. 3W by Gabriel Brownstein (W. W. Norton & Co.): A debut collection of inventive short stories, some borrowing themes from classic writers, revolving around characters in New York City's Upper West Side
  • The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart (Riverhead Books): An ambitious, satirical first novel tracing the picaresque adventures of a Russian Jewish immigrant who journeys back to Eastern Europe

In the History category, the winner is:

  • Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia by Benjamin Nathans (University of California Press): A major reassessment of Jewish life in the capital of imperial Russia, a community of mostly Russian-speaking Jews who were drastically different from the bulk of Russian Jewry at the time

Finalists:

  • Jews in France During World War II by Renee Poznanski (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England): Drawing on a massive body of primary sources, this book reconstructs the experiences of French Jewry during the Second World War
  • Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. by Seth Schwartz (Princeton University Press): An innovative, imaginative reassessment of Jewish society in antiquity, which reveals the impact of tolerance during the Hellenistic period and early Roman Empire

In Philosophy and Thought, the winner is:

  • Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation by Moshe Idel (Yale University Press): A major interpretative work reassessing the meaning of Jewish mysticism by a Hebrew University scholar widely considered the leading living interpreter of the Kabbalah

Finalists:

  • Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought in America by Michael Morgan (Oxford University Press): A comprehensive, deeply learned examination of the full range of theological and philosophical work on the Holocaust
  • The Contemplative Soul: Hebrew Poetry and Philosophic Theory in Medieval Spain by Adena Tanenbaum (Brill): A new interpretation of the work of Jewish poets in Islamic Spain, with an emphasis on the influence of Greco-Arabic philosophy

Background on A. B. Yehoshua

A. B. Yehoshua was born in 1936 in Jerusalem and today lives in Haifa. He has been described by The New York Times as "an Israeli Faulkner," and he is widely recognized as one of the finest living writers in the Hebrew language. A.B. Yehoshua's Journey to the End of the Millennium won the Koret Jewish Book Award in Fiction in 1999. His other books in English include A Late Divorce, The Lover, Mr. Mani, Open Heart, and The Continuing Silence of a Poet: Collected Stories of A. B. Yehoshua. He is a professor of literature at Haifa University.

Background on the Koret Foundation

Since 1979, the Koret Foundation has awarded more than $200 million in grants in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Israel, focusing on education, community and economic development, and Jewish life and culture. With assets of $300 million, the Koret Foundation is one of the largest Jewish-sponsored charitable trusts in the country. The goal of its funding is to be a catalyst for positive change - building vibrant communities, promoting personal initiative, and encouraging creative thinking.

Contact: Director of Communications, Koret Foundation | 415-882-7740