National Foundation For Jewish Culture Board of Directors 2003-2004 CHARLOTTE NEWBERGER=- Ctiainnan of the Board ::JAMES M. AUGUST- BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI Vice Presidents ANNE E. ABRAMSON- BETHESDA, E. MD ROBERT GOODIUND- NEW YORK, NY ALAN S. KAN'NOF- NEW YORK, NY ROBERT S. RIFIUND- NEWYORK, NY MARIaRY C. SLAVIN- TucsoN, AZ MARILYN YOLLES WALDMAN- SAN FRANCISCO, CA ANnA L, WORNICK- HILLSBOROUGH, CA GARY ZELTZER- PORT WASILLNGTON, NY Secretary LINDA PLATT- SAN DIE. GO, CA- Board of Directors ANITA ABRAMOWITZ= SAN FRANCISCO, CA LAURA COHEN APELBAUM-NEW YORK, NY • JUDY APTEICAR- LOS _ALTOS HILLS, CA - JOAN ARNOW- SCARSDALE, NY DAVID BERGER - FOREST HILLS, NY THEODORE BIKEL- LOS ANGELES, CA DR. LEON BOTSTEIN- ANN.ANDALE ON THE HUDSON, NY HOWARD BRAGMAN= Los ANGELES, CA ARTHUR BRODY- AVENEL, NJ DR. ROBERT CARROLL- LOS ANGELES, CA NAOMI CASPE- GLENCOE, IL ROSALIE COHEN- NEW ORLEANS, LA PROF. RONALD C..CURHAN- BOSTON, MA LORRAINE DELL- HOUSTON, TX LINDA ESSAKOW - BEVERLY thus, CA KAREN L. EISNER - NEM,' YORK, NY t I Y FELNBERG- PALM DESERT, CA Rum C. FLVLER- CRANSTON, RI DIANE FRANKEL- SAN FRANCISCO, CA EAN FRIEDMAN- BEVERLY HILLS, CA AVID L. GARFINIa.E- CHICAGO; IL DAVID GILNER - CLNCLNNATI, OH„ BERTRAM H. GOLD- NEW YORK, NT STANLEY P. GOLD- LOS ANGELES, CA ARNOLD C. GREENBERG- WEST HARTFORD; CT JOSEPH D. HLTRWITZ- WEST HARTFORD, CT _ PEGGY JALENAK, MEMPHIS, TN SUSAN KAPLA.N- BOSTON, MA GERSHON KEKST- NEW YORK, NY EN KLUTZNIC.K- SAN FRANosco, CA BARBARA KOHL-SPIRO- 'MILWAUKEE WI LtoYD P. LEvnc- .MILWAUKEE, WI JANET LOWENSTELN- SOUTH ORANGE, NJ JEANNE R. MARTIN- CHICAGO, IL ALAN MINTZ - NEWTON, MA _ SYLVIA NEIL- CHICAGO, IL BRENT NESTOR- NEW YORK, NY JERRY OFFSAY- Los ANGELES, CA STANLEY H. PANTOVvICH- NEW YORK, NY MARTIN' PERETZ- CAMBRIDGE, MA BRUCE M. RAMER- Los ANGELES, CA AMY RULE- CHICAGO, IL LAURA SCHEUER- - NEW YORK, NY M. SIGMUND SHAPIRO- B.ALTLMORE, MD DR. DAVID SIDORSKY- NEW YORK, NT DR. SUSAN SMERD- PITTSBURGH, PA CAROL BRENNGLASS SPINNER- NEW YORIC, NY DR. RENEE STANLEY- DALLAS, TX JOELLE STEEFEL- SAN FRANCISCO, CA HELEN STERN- PORTLAND, OR DIANE STILWELL-WEINBERG- CHICAGO," IL EMILY STONE- NEW YORK, NY STEPHEN D. SUSMAN - HOUSTON, TX ANA. J. TANNEBAUM - CHIC.AGO, IL DAVID R. TOOMEM - Haus-roN, TX LOTS WANDER - SAN FRANCISCO, CA SETH P. W;XMAN - WASHINGTON, DC KAREN GANTZ ZAHLER- NEW YORK, NY continued from page 15 Dara Horn exclaimed in Hebrew: "Oy to me, for I am devas- tated!—for I am a man of impure lips, and I dwell among a people of impure lips." An angel then took a live coal from the altar and touched it 0 Isaiah's lips, searing him into prophecy. Prophecy has long faded among the children of Israel, and as a 26-year-old mortal, I have yet to wi ness the divine throne. But I have had glimpses o hidden worlds. When I met my husband in colleg he mentioned that he knew a little Yiddish. I didn't believe him, of course. I assumed he just meant that he knew a few curse words, or maybe that he too liked to laugh when he heard the word "oy." But the night after my very first Yiddish class, I read alou to him from my textbook—and he suddenly starte translating as I read. What I remember most clear- ly about that evening, the first night of my discovery of an entire buried world that has nourished my writing in every moment since, wasn't just that my future husband knew the difference between metaphor and reality. It was that unlike everyone else to whom I had mentioned that I was learning Yiddish, he didn't laugh. There is a saying in Yiddish that a mentsh trakht un got lakht – a person thinks, and God laughs – and I often suspect that we are being laughed at for our romance with a language that we don't bother to know. Perhaps what we need is the searing coal of an angel to burn the oy from our lips, to make us stop imagining a dead language and start reading, learning, and seeing the real – to make us finally open our books and our mouths, and choose life. continued from page 21 Janet Burstein she carries a priceless ancient manuscript and is, herself, a vessel that contains – and can perform =- the treasured narratives of the past. She summons into the small world of the novel the drama-and the beauty of that wide past, demonstrating its persist- ence within this long exile. In all these works the contemporary . midrashic impulse is performing the work of collective mem- . ory. It draws awareness back to our sources. It remembers for us: that we are not the first of our kind to take the risk of looking backward, to know despair of the world, to struggle against ourselves, to hurt what we would love, and to wander in a wilderness with only the stories of a collective past and a promised future to strengthen our hearts. Jewish Literary Supplement Literary Prizes Fiction 2002-2003 Hadassah Magazine's Harold Ribalow Prize: Aryeh Lev Stollman The Illuminated Soul Jonathan Safran Foer Everything is Illuminated The Samuel Goldberg & Sons Foundation Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers (an award of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture): Gary Shteyngart The Russian Debutante's Handbook Koret Jewish Book Award (in cooperation with the National Foundation for Jewish Culture): Henryk Grynberg; translated by Alicia Nitecki and edited by Theoclosia Robertson Drohobycz, Drohobycz and Other Stories: True Tales from the Holocaust and Life After National Jewish Book Award: Dara Horn In the Image Reform Judaism. Prize for Jewish Fiction: Dara Horn In the Image And don't forget these Jewish books just out in paperback: Steve Almond's My Life in Heavy Metal Jon Papernick's The Ascent of Eli Israel Paul Zakrzewski's Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge Letty Coffin Pogrebin's Three Daughters Zadie Smiths The Autograph Man Elizabeth Rosner's The Speed of Light David Grossman's Be My Knife Gabriel Brownstein's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Apt. 3W NATfONAL FOUNDAT!ON FOR JEWISH CULTURE 23