KORET JEWISH BOOK AWARDS ANNOUNCES WINNERS

San Francisco — Benjamin Harshav's biography of one of the century's most beguiling artists, Marc Chagall and His Times: A Documentary Narrative, and Daniel Matt's lyrical translation of the Kabbalistic work, The Zohar, Pritzker Edition, Volumes I and II won the 2003-2004 Koret Jewish Book Awards for biography, autobiography and literary studies and philosophy and thought, respectively, the Koret Foundation announced today.

Other winners included a tie in the fiction category for Barbara Honigmann's A Love Made Out of Nothing and Zohara's Journey, a pair of novellas published in one volume that tells the stories of two women's wandering in postwar Europe, and Aharon Megged's Foiglman, the story of a Yiddish poet and an Israeli historian helping him to translate and publish his work, and how the intensity of their evolving relationship drives a wedge in the scholar's long and contented marriage.

In the history category, The Jewish Enlightenment, by Shmuel Feiner, won for its profound rethinking of the historical impulses and personalities that shaped the Jewish Enlightenment, the first movement to articulate the foundations of Jewish modernity.

In an unusual coincidence, only one of the winning books was originally written in English, and source materials for that one required extensive translation. Underscoring the esteem conferred on the literary art of translation, this year's judges chose to honor the translators of the three winning books with special recognition. Awards of $2,500 went to John Barrett, who translated Honigmann's work of fiction from the original German, Marganit Weinberger-Rotman, who translated Megged's winning novel from the original Hebrew, and Chaya Naor, who translated Feiner's history, The Jewish Enlightenment from the original Hebrew. Harshav wrote Chagall in English, though he and his wife, Barbara, translated hundreds of letters written in Russian, Yiddish, French, German and Hebrew by Chagall and his contemporaries in preparing the biography.

In an unusual melding of translation and interpretation, Daniel Matt was awarded the prize in philosophy and thought, for The Zohar, Pritzker Edition, Volumes I and II. "While translation may be an art, it can also be genuine scholarship of the highest order," the judges said in reviewing Matt's work, the first two of twelve volumes anticipated. "Restoring the Zohar to our comprehension, these volumes are a monumental contribution to the history of Jewish thought."

Winning authors receive $10,000 and considerable recognition for their contributions to the growing collection of important Jewish books.

A new category, introduced by the Koret Jewish Book Awards last year, offers a young writer (35 or younger) on Jewish themes a $25,000 prize and the opportunity to spend a quarter as writer-in-residence at Stanford University. At age 34, this year's winner, Rachel Kadish, is an award-winning writer of both fiction and non-fiction. A 1991 Princeton University graduate who holds an MA from New York University, she has also published short stories, essays and articles wrestling with issues of Jewish identity and history, and the question of a Jewish future. Her novel, From A Sealed Room, which deals with the choices that people make when hope and reality argue against each other, was published by Putnam in October, 1998, and recently was translated into German.

Finalists for the Young Writer on Jewish Themes Award included Sam Apple, Shalom Auslander, David Bezmozgis, Danit Brown, T Cooper, Boris Fishman, Matti Friedman, Keith Gessen, Sara Houghteling, Joshua Kun, Jay Michaelson, Samantha Shapiro, Sean Singer and Miriam Udel-Lambert.

Fiction author Yehoshua Kenaz was a finalist for his book, Infiltration. Edeet Ravel was the other fiction finalist this year, for Ten Thousand Lovers.

Other finalists were, for biography, autobiography and literary studies, Peter Schafer for Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah and Ian Thomson for Primo Levi: A Life; for history, J. H. Chajes, Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism and Ronald Schechter for Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715-1815; and for philosophy and thought Michael Mack for German Idealism and the Jew: The Inner Anti-Semitism of Philosophy and German Jewish Responses, Lawrence Fine for Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship, and Melissa Raphael, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust.

This is the sixth year that Koret Jewish Book Awards have been presented in cooperation with the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. Previous Koret Jewish Book Award winners have included Cynthia Ozick, A. B. Yehoshua and Philip Roth.

Since its inception in 1979, the Koret Foundation has awarded nearly $277 million in grants addressing a broad range of issues, from education reform to strengthening cultural institutions to stimulating free-market solutions and taking up other socio-economic challenges. In addition, Koret has launched a series of initiatives that are revitalizing and strengthening cultural, educational and policy-making institutions, both in the Bay Area and in Israel.

Over its first quarter-century, the Koret Foundation's funding philosophy has evolved from traditional grantmaking toward innovative, entrepreneurial approaches. Underlying the philosophy of the Koret Foundation has been the vision of founder Joseph Koret, whose unyielding commitment to the American capitalistic system and democracy's freedoms made it possible for him and his wife, Stephanie, to achieve the American dream.

Koret Jewish Book Awards
At-a-Glance

Biography, Autobiography and Literary Studies
Marc Chagall and His Times: A Documentary Narrative by Benjamin Harshav (Stanford University Press) Finalists: Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah by Peter Schafer; Primo Levi: A Life by Ian Thomson

Fiction
A Love Made Out of Nothing and Zohara's Journey by Barbara Honigmann, translated from German by John Barrett (David R. Godine)
Foiglman by Aharon Megged , translated from Hebrew by Marganit Weinberger-Rotman (The Toby Press) Finalists: Infiltration by Yehoshua Kenaz; Ten Thousand Lovers by Edeet Ravel

History
The Jewish Enlightenment by Shmuel Feiner, translated from Hebrew by Chaya Naor (University of Pennsylvania Press)
Finalists: Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism by J. H. Chajes; Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715-1815 by Ronald Schechter

Philosophy and Thought
The Zohar, Pritzker Edition, Volumes I and II by Daniel Matt (Stanford University Press)
Finalists: German Idealism and the Jew: The Inner Anti-Semitism of Philosophy and German Jewish Responses by Michael Mack; Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship by Lawrence Fine; The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust by Melissa Raphael

Young Writer on Jewish Themes
Rachel Kadish
Finalists: Sam Apple, Shalom Auslander, David Bezmozgis, Danit Brown, T Cooper, Boris Fishman, Matti Friedman, Keith Gessen, Sara Houghteling, Joshua Kun, Jay Michaelson, Samantha Shapiro, Sean Singer and Miriam Udel-Lambert

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