Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ final book wins big at National Jewish Book Awards
Image by iStock
By Irene Katz Connelly January 27, 2021
The National Jewish Book Awards selected the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ “Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times” as the most notable Jewish book of 2020.
Sacks, a prolific author and a leader in modern Jewish thought, has won several prizes at the awards program, which the Jewish Book Council has operated since 1950. But this one will likely be his last: The awards committee chose to posthumously honor Sacks, who died in November 2020 at the age of 72.
Other big winners included Laura Arnold Lieberman, who won awards in three categories for the historical study “The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects” and the Monday Morning Cooking Club, a group of recipe writers in Australia who snagged a food writing award for their cookbook “Now For Something Sweet.” Publishing agent Deborah Harris won the Jewish Book Council’s Carolyn Starman Hessel Mentorship Award.
The Forward has covered many of the prize winners and finalists; read our reviews of their award-winning books below.
Winners
Everett Family Foundation Award for Jewish Book of the Year: “Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times” by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
JJ Greenberg Memorial Award for Fiction: “Apeirogon” by Column McCann
Biography Award in Memory of Sara Berenson Stone: “From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History” by Nancy Sinkoff
Miller Family Award in Memory of Helen Dunn Weinstein and June Keit Miller: “The Lost Shtetl” by Max Gross
Finalists
The Krauss Family Award in Memory of Simon & Shulamith Goldberg for Autobiography and Memoir: “Here We Are: My Friendship With Philip Roth” by Benjamin Taylor
JJ Greenberg Memorial Award for Fiction: “Evening” by Nessa Rappoport
Irene Katz Connelly is a staff writer at the Forward. You can contact her at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @katz_conn.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Dive In
-
Culture How an Israeli dance company shaped a Catholic school boy’s life
-
Culture How Abraham Lincoln in a kippah wound up making a $250,000 deal on ‘Shark Tank’
-
Books What is ‘Zionism without Zion?’ New history asks, but can’t answer
-
Culture In the new Fantastic Four trailer, a glimpse of Yancy Street’s Yiddishkeit
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Pope Francis, who advanced church’s relationships with Jews, dies at 88
-
Fast Forward ‘F–k Israel’ message displayed at Coachella music festival and streamed to millions
-
Fast Forward Jewish students, alumni decry ‘weaponization of antisemitism’ across country
-
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.