Michael Chabon, Daniel Gordis win National Jewish Book Awards

Gabe Friedman

(JTA) — Michael Chabon and Daniel Gordis were among the winners of the 2016 National Jewish Book Awards.

Gordis’ book “Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn” won the Jewish Book of the Year award, the Jewish Book Council announced Wednesday.

A Conservative rabbi, Gordis is senior vice president and the Koret Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College in Jerusalem, where he has lived since 1998.

Chabon, who lives in Berkeley, California, was honored with a Modern Jewish Literary Achievement Award for books that include “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” and “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.” His latest novel is the semi-autobiographical “Moonglow,” which draws on memories of his family.

Here are the other winners:

American Jewish Studies: “Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food,” by Roger Horowitz

Anthologies and Collections: “Makers of Jewish Modernity: Thinkers, Artists, Leaders, and the World They Made,” edited by Jacques Picard, Jacques Revel, Michael P. Steinberg and Idith Zertal

Biography, Autobiography and Memoir: “But You Did Not Come Back,” by Marceline Loridan-Ivens

Book Club Award: “And After the Fire,” by Lauren Belfer

Children’s Literature: “I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark,” by Debbie Levy, illustrated by Elizabeth Baddeley

Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice: “Changing the World from the Inside Out: A Jewish Approach to Personal and Social Change,” by Rabbi David Jaffe

Debut Fiction: “Anna and the Swallow Man,” by Gabriel Savit

Education and Jewish Identity: “Next Generation Judaism: How College Students and Hillel Can Help Reinvent Jewish Organizations,” by Mike Uram

Fiction: “The Gustav Sonata,” by Rose Tremain

History: “The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel,” by Uri Bar-Joseph

Holocaust: “Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law: A Quest for Justice in a Post-Holocaust World,” by Michael Bazyler

Modern Jewish Thought and Experience: “Never Better!: The Modern Jewish Picaresque,” by Miriam Udel

Poetry: “Almost Complete Poems,” by Stanley Moss

Scholarship: “Anti-Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response 1391-1392,” by Benjamin R. Gampel

Sephardic Culture: “Extraterritorial Dreams: European Citizenship, Sephardi Jews, and the Ottoman Twentieth Century,” by Sarah Abrevaya Stein

Writing Based on Archival Material: “Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece,” by Devin E. Naar

Women’s Studies: “The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate,” edited by Rabbi Rebecca Einstein Schorr and Rabbi Alysa Mendelson Graf

Young Adult: “On Blackberry Hill,” by Rachel Mann