The JWA family extends a joyous mazel tov to Hasia Diner, winner of a 2009 National Jewish Book Award.  Her recent work, We Remember with Reverence and Love, was the winner of the Celebrate 350 Award in American Jewish Studies. 

Hasia Diner, a member of JWA's Academic Advisory Council, teaches at New York University where she is the Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History, as well as a Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, and the Director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History.  We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust is a breakthrough work challenging the myth of silence after the Holocaust.

It has become an accepted truth: after World War II, American Jews chose to be silent about the mass murder of millions of their European brothers and sisters at the hands of the Nazis. Whether motivated by fear, shame, or the desire to assimilate, the Jewish community in the United States simply did not memorialize the Holocaust until the Eichmann trial and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War made it socially acceptable for them to do so.

In a compelling work sure to draw fire from academics and pundits alike, Hasia R. Diner shows this assumption of silence to be categorically false. Read more at NYU Press. 

Hasia Diner and the other winners will be honored at the 59th Annual National Jewish Book Awards ceremony to be held March 9th at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. Also, the incredible Ruth Gruber will be presented with the 2009 Jewish Book Council Lifetime Achievement Award. 

We would also like to congratulate Keren McGinity, another member of JWA's Academic Advisory Council. Her book, Still Jewish: A History of Women and Intermarriage in America, was a finalist for the 2009 National Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies, an award named for one of JWA's founding board members, Barbara Dobkin. Judith interviewed Keren McGinity about Still Jewish last July; click here to read the interview.