UC BERKELEY PROF'S NEW TORAH TRANSLATION TOPS KORET JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNERS
(San Francisco, March 3, 2005) — Robert Alter's path-breaking translation and commentary on The Five Books of Moses and Amos Oz's celebrated memoir of growing up in the fledgling State of Israel have been selected as 2004–2005 Koret Jewish Book Award winners, it was announced today.
Alter, the Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature and Director of Jewish Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, won a special award for translation and commentary for The Five Books of Moses (W.W. Norton & Company). "The translation is outstanding, and the culmination of a lifetime of the highest level of scholarly achievement," said Steven J. Zipperstein, chairman of the Koret Jewish Book Awards advisory board and director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University.
Oz's A Tale of Love and Darkness, translated from the Hebrew by Nicolas de Lange (Harcourt, Inc.) won the award for biography. A work of uncommon insight, passion, and deep, searching intelligence, the memoir is a story—as seen through the uncannily persuasive eyes of a child—of Oz's parents, of Jerusalem in the late 1940s and early '50s, and of a young, haunted Israeli state.
For the first time in the program's seven-year history, a prize was awarded for children's literature. The winner, The Cats in Krasinski Square by Karen Hesse, illustrated by Wendy Watson (Scholastic Books) is a quietly compelling, poetic rendering of a young girl's resistance to the horror of life in the Warsaw Ghetto, illuminating the darkness of the time in terms that are gentle and accessible enough for young readers.
In addition to children's literature and biography, Koret Jewish Book Awards are conferred in the categories of history, fiction, and philosophy and thought.
In the history category, Elisheva Baumgarten's Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton University Press) is an original and fascinating portrait of the intimacy of Jewish family, motherhood, and childhood in the context of life in medieval Christian Europe.
Tony Eprile produced the fiction category winner with his debut novel, The Persistence of Memory (W. W. Norton & Company). Set in the dizzying final days of the apartheid regime in his native South Africa, Eprile's novel, written from his adopted home in Vermont, explores the curse of a perfect memory in a nation plagued with rose-colored recall.
The award for philosophy and thought was granted to a courageous work of self-exploration, Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition (University of Wisconsin Press) by Rabbi Steven Greenberg, an Orthodox, homosexual rabbi and one of the leading educators at CLAL–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, founded by the renowned Yitz Greenberg (no relation). The book is a learned, accessible, and unflinchingly honest theological work that resulted from the author's decade-long struggle to reconcile his religious beliefs and his sexual orientation, and conveys his evolution to resolution.
Tim Bradford won Koret's Young Writer on Jewish Themes award. A Ph.D. candidate at Oklahoma State University, Bradford is currently conducting research for a novella on the history of the Vélodrome d'Hiver, the 1942 roundup of French and stateless Jews who were held in the winter cycling stadium in Paris before being shipped off to Auschwitz. Koret judges cited Bradford's achievement in blending fiction, poetry, photographs, and historical documents into a graceful and significant story.
The Koret Jewish Book Awards will be presented on Monday, April 11, at an invitation-only ceremony at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. This marks the first year that the Koret Jewish Book Awards ceremony will be held in San Francisco, home of the Koret Foundation. Previous years' awards ceremonies have been held in New York.
In celebration of the 2005 Koret Jewish Book Awards, the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco will present a "Literary Arts Mosaic" on Saturday, April 9 and Sunday, April 10, with a series of free events showcasing the Award winners as well as other celebrated local authors, including Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) and Shalom Auslander in Conversation. A detailed schedule of events is available at www.jccsf.org or by calling (415) 292-1219.
Since their inception in 1998, the Koret Jewish Book Awards have become the most prestigious awards in Jewish writing, giving heightened attention to the best Jewish books in the categories of biography, fiction, history, and philosophy, and now, children's literature. This year, nearly 500 publisher submissions were juried by panels of prominent academics, novelists, and distinguished writers. Each book award carries a $10,000 prize. The winning Young Writer (under 40) on Jewish Themes receives a $25,000 award and the opportunity to spend a quarter in residence at Stanford University, teaching, researching, and writing.
For an invitation to the April 11 ceremony, please contact the Koret Jewish Book Awards.