Sami Rohr Prize Finalists Named

From the Jewish Book Council:

"A diverse group of five non-fiction authors have been named as finalists for the 2010 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, the newest, most significant and largest monetary award of its kind. The Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature awards $100,000 to its top winner, with a $25,000 Choice Award given to its first runner-up. It is administered under the auspices of the Jewish Book Council.

[The] announcement caps a year-long process of reviewing books by a select panel of judges. On December 16th, the finalists will meet with the non-fiction judges of the Sami Rohr Prize in New York, and the winners will be announced at the end of January. The 2010 award ceremony will be held in Jerusalem on March 31st.

This year’s finalists for the fourth annual Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature are:

* Lila Corwin Berman – Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and the Creation of an American Public Identity (University of California Press)

* Ari Y. Kelman – Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio in the United States (University of California Press)

* Kenneth B. Moss – Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution (Harvard University Press)

* Danya Ruttenberg – Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion (Beacon Press)

* Sarah Abrevaya Stein – Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce (Yale University Press)

Chosen from a pool of twenty-five entries, this year’s finalists represent important emerging voices in Jewish life and thought. The subject matter of the finalists’ work include the role that rabbis and Jewish intellectuals have played in forming American public identity, a candid and quirky spiritual memoir, the Jewish renaissance in Russia at the time of the Russian Revolution, the involvement of Jews in the international feather trade and Yiddish radio in America."

To read the full press release, please click here.