
Natan Notable Books at the Jewish Book Council
In 2019, Natan and Jewish Book Council launched Natan Notable Books, a twice-yearly award for nonfiction books on Jewish themes. Natan Notable Books is a new iteration of the “Natan Book Award.”
Natan Notable Books brings Natan’s values of infusing Jewish life with creativity and meaning into the intellectual arena by supporting and promoting breakthrough books intended for mainstream audiences that will catalyze conversations around the issues that Natan grapples with in its grantmaking.
Natan Notable Book winners receive a Natan Notable Book seal and $5,000 for the author, marketing/distribution coaching and promotion from Jewish Book Council and Natan, and customized support designed to bring the book and/or the author to new audiences.
For more information or to submit a title, click here. Inquiries can be directed to natannotable@jewishbooks.org.
Summer 2025: Natan Notable Book Award
Natan and Jewish Book Council are thrilled to announce the Summer 2025 Natan Notable Book: As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story From Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us by Sarah Hurwitz (HarperOne, September 9, 2025).
At a time when Jewish identity is worn with pride and discomfort, joy and fear, Hurwitz’s book takes a discerning look back to the sources of it all, told with the empathetic voice of one who is familiar with the full range. Wanting to account for the disconnect or disinterest that many Jews express when thinking about their own religion, As a Jew begins to peel away the stories that shaped perceptions of Jews, the anti-semitic propaganda that subtlety or intentionally hid the core of Judaism and Jewish life from the outside world, but also from Jews themselves. And as Hurwitz herself dives deeper into Jewish history, tradition, scholarship, and observance, she brings her readers along to discover the depth of wisdom, the rootedness that is founded on ritual, and above all, the joy that Judaism has to offer. As Hurwitz writes in her introduction to As a Jew, “This book is an account of how I got to this point: how I sought to engage with Judaism on its own terms, not those of others who misunderstand or disdain it; how I stripped away the layers of distortions and slanders that made me recoil from my own tradition; and how I have learned, and am still learning to live, as a Jew.”
In choosing As a Jew for the Summer 2025 Natan Notable Book award, the selection committee recognized the importance of this book at this moment in history. As a Jew is told by an author with a clear-sighted view not only of the challenges facing the American Jewish community, but also of the path through the tangled intersections of this current time and forward into the future. Committee member Daniel Bonner reflected: “We are in the midst of a renaissance in American Jewish life, and we could ask for no more powerful a messenger than Sarah Hurwitz.” Bonner describes As a Jew “as a bold, eloquent, powerful call to Jews to own their Jewish identity, deepen their Jewish knowledge, and cultivate a sense of Jewish peoplehood. This award has long recognized authors — Matti Friedman, Ilana Kurshan, Bari Weiss, Ari Shavit, and others — whose books spur conversations about important issues in contemporary Jewish life. In this book, Sarah addresses them all and offers a master-class on a thousand years of anti-Semitism, makes the case for integrating Jewish wisdom into our lives, and considers Israel’s place among the nations. She is empathetic, drawing on her experience as a hospital chaplain. She is a great storyteller, owing to her years a White House speechwriter. And she is unshakably, unapologetically proud, in the knowledge that she now owns her people’s story.”
Twice a year, Natan Notable Books recognizes recently published or about-to-be-published non-fiction books that promise to catalyze conversations aligned with the themes of Natan's grantmaking: reinventing Jewish life and community for the twenty-first century, shifting notions of individual and collective Jewish identity, the history and future of Israel, understanding and confronting contemporary forms of antisemitism, and the evolving relationship between Israel and world Jewry.
10/7 100 Human Stories • Lee Yaron • Winter 2025
Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream • Francine Klagsbrun • Fall 2024

Target Tehran: How Israel Is Using Sabotage, Cyberwarfare, Assassination—and Secret Diplomacy—to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Create a New Middle East • Yonah Jeremy Bob and Ilan Evyatar • Spring 2024

The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel's Battle for Its Inner Soul • Isabel Kershner • Spring 2023 Winner
Feeding Women of the Talmud: Feeding Ourselves • Kenden Alfond • Fall 2022 Winner
100 Saturdays • Michael Frank • Spring 2022 Winner
People Love Dead Jews • Dara Horn • Fall 2021 Winner
From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History • Dr. Nancy Sinkoff • Fall 2020 Winner
The Seventh Heaven: Travels Through Jewish Latin America • Ilan Stavans • Spring 2020 Winner
How to Fight Anti-Semitism • Bari Weiss • Fall 2019 Winner
The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky • Susie Linfield • Fall 2019 Winner
Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel • Matti Friedman • 2018 Winner
If All the Seas Were Ink • Ilana Kurshan • 2018 Finalist
Jewish Comedy: A Serious History • Jeremy Dauber • 2018 Finalist
Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century • James Loeffler • 2018 Finalist
My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel • Ari Shavit • 2014 Winner
If All the Seas Were Ink • Ilana Kurshan • 2018 Natan Book Award Finalist

Natan Book Award Committee
Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen (Chair)
Daniel Bonner
Jeremy Dauber
Felicia Herman
Matthew Hiltzik
Sarah Gould Steinhardt
Michael Wigotsky