
Professor of Near Eastern Studies and the Program in Judaic Studies Jonathan Gribetz has won the 2024 National Jewish Book Award in the History category (the Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award) for Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO Effort to Know the Enemy (Princeton University Press, 2024).
“In Reading Herzl in Beirut, Jonathan Marc Gribetz tells the story of the PLO Research Center from its establishment in 1965 until its ultimate expulsion from Lebanon in 1983. Gribetz explores why the PLO invested in research about the Jews, what its researchers learned about Judaism and Zionism, and how the knowledge they acquired informed the PLO’s relationship to Israel.”
Reading Herzl in Beirut has been described as “fascinating,” “deeply researched,” “comprehensive,” “meticulous and original.”
“Inaugurated in 1950, the National Jewish Book Awards is the longest-running North American awards program of its kind and is recognized as the most prestigious. The Awards are intended to recognize authors, and encourage reading, of outstanding English-language books of Jewish interest.”
Past winners and finalists with connections to the Department of Near Eastern Studies include:
Oded Zinger (Ph.D. 2014), finalist, the 2023 Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award (scholarship category), for Living with Law: Gender and Community among the Jews of Medieval Egypt (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023);
Jessica M. Marglin (Ph.D. 2012), finalist, the 2022 Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award (history category), for The Shamama Case: Contesting Citizenship across the Mediterranean (Princeton University Press, 2022);
Marina Rustow (Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East and Professor of Near Eastern Studies and History), finalist, the 2020 JDC-Herbert Katzki Awarad (writing based on archival material category), for The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo (Princeton University Press, 2020);
Eve Krakowski (Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies and the Program in Judaic Studies), winner, the 2017 Barbara Dobkin Award (women’s studies category), for Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt: Female Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture (Princeton University Press, 2017);
Mark Cohen (Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East, Emeritus, and Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Emeritus), finalist, the 2017 Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award (scholarship category), for Maimonides and the Merchants: Jewish Law and Society in the Medieval Islamic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017);
Jessica M. Marglin (Ph.D. 2012), winner, the 2017 Mimi S. Frank Award in Memory of Becky Levy (Sephardic culture category), for Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco (Yale University Press, 2016);
Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman (Ph.D.), finalist, the 2014 Mimi S. Frank Award in Memory of Becky Levy (Sephardic culture category), for The Business of Identity: Jews, Muslims, and Economic Life in Medieval Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2014); and
Michael Oren (Ph.D. 1986), winner, 2002–2003 Everett Family Foundation (Jewish Book of the Year), for Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2002).