These were the five finalists for the inaugural Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. The top three will be honored at a gala May 21 in New York:* $100,000 prize to Tamar Yellin for “The Genizah at the House of Shepher.”* $7,500 prizes to runners-up Amir Gutfreund of Israel for “Our Holocaust” and Michael Lavigne of San Francisco for “Not Me.”The two other finalists were British author Naomi Alderman for “Disobedience” and Israeli writer Yael Hedaya for “Accidents.”The five judges were Ruth Wisse, Harvard University professor of Yiddish and comparative literature; Rebecca Goldstein, author and Harvard philosophy professor; Jeremy Dauber, associate professor of Yiddish language, literature and culture at Columbia University; Daisy Maryles, executive editor of “Publishers Weekly”; and Jonathan Rosen, novelist and editorial director of “Nextbook.”
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