The Koret Jewish Book Award is an annual award that recognizes "recently published books on any aspect of Jewish life in the categories of biography/autobiography and literary studies, fiction, history and philosophy/thought published in, or translated into, English." The award was established in 1998 by the

Koret Foundation The Koret Foundation is a private foundation based in San Francisco, California. Its mission is to strengthen the Bay Area and support the Jewish community in the U.S. and Israel through grantmaking to organizations involved with education, arts an ...

, in cooperation with the

National Foundation for Jewish Culture The Foundation for Jewish Culture (formerly the National Foundation for Jewish Culture) was an advocacy group for Jewish cultural life and creativity in the United States. Founded in 1960, it supported writers, filmmakers, artists, composers, ch ...

, to increase awareness of the best new Jewish books and their authors. Professor Samuel Zipperstein of

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

oversaw the awards from their creation until 2005, when the Koret Foundation decided to increase public interest in the awards by honoring books that were less academic and more accessible to readers. Jewish Family & Life!, a non-profit organization, was selected to manage the awards. Its CEO, Rabbi Yosef Abramowitz, stated that he hoped to transform the awards into something akin to

Oprah's Book Club Oprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the United States, American talk show ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new book, usually a nov ...

. The History category and the Biography, Autobiography or Literary Study category were eliminated and replaced with a new category, Jewish Life & Living. The Koret Jewish Book Award is one of the highest honors for authors of works on Jewish subjects.Rappaport, Scott
"Jewish studies to host lecture by winner of 2005 Koret history book prize"
''UC Santa Cruz Currents'', April 4, 2005. Accessed February 19, 2008. "The Koret Jewish Book Award is considered to be one of the highest honors for authors writing prose on Jewish themes."

Winners

Fiction

Jewish Life and Living

History (discontinued)

Philosophy and Thought

Biography, Autobiography or Literary Study (discontinued)

Children's Literature

Special Awards

German writer W. G. Sebald received a special Koret award in 2002 for his contributions to literature. Steven J. Zipperstein, the director of the Korets, cited Sebald's novel ''

Austerlitz Austerlitz may refer to: History * Battle of Austerlitz, an 1805 victory by the French Grand Army of Napoleon Bonaparte Places * Austerlitz, German name for Slavkov u Brna in the Czech Republic, which gave its name to the Battle of Austerlitz a ...

'' as a particularly impressive work. Sebald died several months before the awards ceremony. In 2006,

Jonathan Safran Foer Jonathan Safran Foer (; born February 21, 1977) is an American novelist. He is known for his novels ''Everything Is Illuminated'' (2002), '' Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close'' (2005), '' Here I Am'' (2016), and for his non-fiction works ''Eatin ...

's novel ''

Everything is Illuminated ''Everything Is Illuminated'' is the first novel by the American writer Jonathan Safran Foer, published in 2002. It was adapted into a film of the same name starring Elijah Wood and Eugene Hütz in 2005. The book's writing and structure recei ...

'' received JBooks.com's People's Choice award for the best Jewish work of fiction of the previous decade, as determined by 1,500 voters in an online contest.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Koret Jewish Book Award
American literary awards Awards established in 1998 Jewish literary awards Jewish American literature Literary awards honoring minority groups