Five finalists have been named for this year's Sami Rohr Prize for
Jewish Literature, which honors "an emerging author in the field of
Jewish literature who has written a book of exceptional literary merit
that stimulates an interest in themes of Jewish concern." The award
focuses on fiction and nonfiction in alternating years. The $100,000
prize, administered by the Jewish Book Council and created last year by
the children and grandchildren of Sami Rohr, will be given next spring.
The inaugural winner last year was fiction writer Tamar Yellin for The Genizah at the House of Shepher (Toby Press).
The finalists for this year are:
- Ilana M. Blumberg for Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman Among Books (University of Nebraska Press)
- Eric L. Goldstein for The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race and American Identity (Princeton University Press)
- Lucette Lagnado for The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World (Ecco)
- Michael Makovsky for Churchill's Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft (Yale University Press)
- Haim Watzman for A Crack in the Earth: A Journey Up Israel's Rift Valley (FSG)