Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature

The Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature is an annual prize awarded to an outstanding literary work of Jewish interest by an emerging writer. Previously administered by the Jewish Book Council, it is now given in association with the National Library of Israel.

Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature
Awarded for	recognising the unique role of contemporary writers in the transmission and examination of the Jewish experience, and to encourage and promote outstanding writing of Jewish interest.
Country	United States
First award	2007
Website	samirohrprize.org

History

In 2006, the family of Jewish philanthropist Sami Rohr honored his lifelong love of Jewish learning and great books by establishing the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature on his 80th birthday. At its inception, the $100,000 prize was the largest literary prize in North America.^[1] The second place winner receives the Jewish Literature Choice Award of $25,000.^[2]

The annual award, first awarded in 2007, alternates between honoring fiction and non-fiction and seeks to promote writings of Jewish interest, and to encourage the examination of Jewish values among emerging writers.^[3][4] Awardees are honored at an August ceremony at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.^[4] The award was administered by the Jewish Book Council, before being given in association with the National Library of Israel.^[4]

In 2023, Israeli author Iddo Geffen won the prize, the first time it was awarded to the author of a Hebrew-language work and its translator, Daniella Zamir. The award to a translated work represented an effort to expand the reach of the prize to non-English works.^[4]

Honorees

Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature honorees

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
2007	Tamar Yellin	The Genizah at the House of Shepher	Winner	[5][6]
	Michael Lavigne	Not Me	Runner-up	[5][6]
	Amir Gutfreund	Our Holocaust	Runner-up	[5][6]
	Yael Hedaya	Accidents	Shortlist
	Naomi Alderman	Disobedience	Shortlist
2008	Lucette Lagnado	The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit	Winner	[7][8]
	Eric Goldstein	The Price of Whiteness	Runner-up	[7][8]
	Ilana Blumberg	Houses of Study	Runner-up	[7][8]
	Haim Watzman	A Crack in the Earth	Shortlist
	Michael Makovsky	Churchill's Promised Land	Shortlist
2009	Sana Krasikov	One More Year	Winner	[9][10]
	Dalia Sofer	The Septembers of Shiraz	Runner-up	[9][10]
	Elisa Albert	The Book of Dahlia	Shortlist
	Anne Landsman	The Rowing Lesson	Shortlist
	Anya Ulinich	Petropolis	Shortlist
2010	Kenneth B. Moss	Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution	Winner (tie)	[11]
	Sarah Abrevaya Stein	Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce		[11]
	Lila Corwin Berman	Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and the Creation of an American Public Identity	Shortlist
	Ari Y. Kelman	Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio in the United States	Shortlist
	Danya Ruttenberg	Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion	Shortlist
2011	Austin Ratner	The Jump Artist	Winner	[12]
	Joseph Skibell	A Curable Romantic	Runner-up	[12]
	Nadia Kalman	The Cosmopolitans	Shortlist
	Julie Orringer	The Invisible Bridge	Shortlist
	Allison Amend	Stations West	Shortlist
2012	Gal Beckerman	When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry	Winner	[13]
	Abigail Green	Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero	Runner-up	[13]
	Ruth Franklin	A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction	Shortlist
	Jonathan B. Krasner	The Benderly Boys and American Jewish Education	Shortlist
	James Loeffler	The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire	Shortlist
2013	Francesca Segal	The Innocents	Winner	[14]
	Ben Lerner	Leaving the Atocha Station	Runner-up	[14]
	Stuart Nadler	The Book of Life	Shortlist
	Asaf Schurr	Motti	Shortlist
	Shani Boianjiu	The People of Forever Are Not Afraid	Shortlist
2014	Matti Friedman	The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible	Winner	[15]
	Sarah Bunin Benor	Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism	Runner-up	[15]
	Eliyahu Stern	The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism	Shortlist	[16]
	Nina S. Spiegel	Embodying Hebrew Culture: Aesthetics, Athletics, and Dance in the Jewish Community of Mandate Palestine	Shortlist	[16]
	Marni Davis	Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition	Shortlist	[16]
2015	Ayelet Tsabari	The Best Place on Earth	Winner	[17]
	Kenneth Bonert	The Lion Seeker	Runner-up	[17]
	Yelena Akhtiorskaya	Panic in a Suitcase	Shortlist	[18]
	Boris Fishman	A Replacement Life	Shortlist	[18]
	Molly Antopol	The UnAmericans	Shortlist	[18]
2016	Lisa Leff	The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust	Winner	[19]
	Yehuda Mirsky	Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution	Runner-up	[19]
	Aviyah Kushner	The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible	Shortlist
	Dan Ephron	Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel	Shortlist
	Adam Mendelsohn	The Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire	Shortlist
2017	Idra Novey	Ways to Disappear	Winner	[20]
	Daniel Torday	The Last Flight of Poxl West: A Novel	Runner-up	[20]
	Rebecca Schiff	The Bed Moved: Stories	Shortlist	[21]
	Paul Goldberg	The Yid	Shortlist	[21]
	Adam Ehrlich Sachs	Inherited Disorders: Stories, Parables & Problems	Shortlist	[21]
2018	Ilana Kurshan	If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir	Winner	[22]
	Sara Yael Hirschhorn	City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement	Runner-up	[22]
	Chanan Tigay	The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt For The World's Oldest Bible	Shortlist	[23]
	Yair Mintzker	The Many Deaths of Jew Süss: The Notorious Trial and Execution of an Eighteenth-Century Court Jew	Shortlist	[23]
	Shari Rabin	Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America	Shortlist	[23]
2019	Michael David Lukas	The Last Watchman of Old Cairo	Winner	[24]
	Dalia Rosenfeld	The Words We Think We Know	Runner-up	[24]
	Rachel Kadish	The Weight of Ink	Shortlist	[25]
	Mark Sarvas	Memento Park	Shortlist	[25]
	Margot Singer	Underground Fugue	Shortlist	[25]
2020	Benjamin Balint	Kafka's Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy	Winner	[26]
	Sarah Hurwitz	Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There)	Shortlist
	Yaakov Katz	Shadow Strike: Inside Israel's Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power	Shortlist
	Mikhal Dekel	Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey	Shortlist
2022	Menachem Kaiser	Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure	Winner	[27]
	Danny Adeno Abebe, trans. by Eylon Levy	From Africa to Zion: The Shepherd Boy Who Became Israel's First Ethiopian-Born Journalist	Shortlist	[28]
	Ayala Fader	Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age	Shortlist	[28]
2023	Iddo Gefen, trans. by Daniella Zamir	Jerusalem Beach	Winner
	Anna Solomon	The Book of V	Shortlist	[29]
	Mikolaj Grynberg, trans. by Sean Gasper Bye	I'd Like To Say I'm Sorry, But There's No One To Say Sorry To	Shortlist	[29]
	Max Gross	The Lost Shtetl	Shortlist	[29]
2024	Oren Kessler	Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict	Winner	[30]
	Jeremy Eichler	Time's Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance	Shortlist	[30]
	Michael Frank	One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World	Shortlist	[30]
	Natalie Livingstone	The Women of Rothschild: The Untold Story of the World's Most Famous Dynasty	Shortlist	[30]