Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Art Spiegelman Wins Jewish Book Award

Author and illustrator Art Spiegelman and Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld are among the winners of the 2011 National Jewish Book Awards.

The awards, which were announced Wednesday, are given out annually by the Jewish Book Council to honor outstanding books of Jewish interest.

Spiegelman’s new book, “MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus,” took the prize in the Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir category. The judges describe it “as brilliant and paradigm-shattering as…Maus… a work of genius.”

Appelfeld won his third National Jewish Book Award in fiction for “Until the Dawn’s Light.” Ned Beauman, the 26-year-old author of “Boxer, Beetle,” won in the Outstanding Debut Fiction category.

Simon Sebag Montefiore was honored with the Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year Award for his epic history, “Jerusalem: The Biography.”

This year, the Jewish Book Council will recognize the contributions of board member Myra H. Kraft, who died in July. The Myra H. Kraft Memorial Award in Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice, endowed by her husband, Robert Kraft, and her family, has been established for her dedication to the world of Jewish literature. It will be presented to Rabbi David A. Teutsch for his book “A Guide to Jewish Practice: Everyday Living.”

Other winners include Hirsch Goodman in the History category for “The Anatomy of Israel’s Survival;” Julie Chibbaro in the Children’s and Young Adult Literature category for “Deadly,” and Dr. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Dr. Tikva Frymer-Kensky in the Women’s Studies category for “The JPS Bible Commentary: Ruth.”

The awards will be presented March 14 in New York. A complete list of the winners can be seen here. http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards/2011-national-jewish-book-award-winners The Jewish Book Council has been giving out the National Jewish Book Awards since 1948.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.

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.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

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.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.