What is the value of a Jewish book and Jewish books? The 2025 National Jewish Book Awards are a liberal balm in the midst of a miserable year+ of hostage crisis and war and two+ miserable years of Kahanist government in Israel and spikes of anti-Semitism in the Diaspora and the election of Donald Trump in the United States. History, art, social commentary, memoir, food, children’s literature. The winners are listed here. In the face of harsh worlds and bad political headwinds, they run counter to the for-now regnant and cruel illiberal currents across the globe. The Jewish Book Council is a unique institution of American Judaism. They draw attention to important books whose mention do not and will not appear in non-Jewish spaces. Jewish books reminds us of the modest power of place, namely autonomous Jewish culture and humanistic expressions of Jewish community in a world that does not especially care for Jews and Jewish things and liberal humanism.
