NEW YORK — The owner of the New England Patriots joined writers, literary judges and supporters of the Jewish Book Council for the inaugural presentation of an award named after his widow, Myra Kraft.

Fighting through tears, Robert Kraft thanked the assembled crowd for memorializing his wife.

The presentation was part of the council’s National Jewish Book Awards dinner and ceremony. Myra Kraft, whose death last year at 68 from cancer sparked tributes from Patriots players, served as a member of the council’s board and as an awards judge. 

The council’s prize for contemporary Jewish life and practice is now called the Myra H. Kraft Memorial Award. This year it went to Rabbi David A. Teutsch for his work “A Guide to Jewish Practice: Volume 1 – Everyday Living.”

During the dinner before the awards ceremony, Myra Kraft was remembered by fellow council board member and judge Jane Weitzman. Weitzman recalled Kraft’s support of literature, as well as her travels around the world to support the work of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

After Weitzman’s remarks, one of the night’s presenters — author and journalism professor Samuel Freedman — presented Robert Kraft with the “New American Haggadah,” edited by Jonathan Safran Foer and featuring a translation by Nathan Englander.