Sandee Brawarsky, The Jewish Week’s culture editor, won the first-place award for Excellence in Interfaith Relations Reporting from the American Jewish Press Association.
Brawarsky earned her fourth overall “Rockower,” as the awards are known, for her May 29, 2019 article “Close Encounters Across the Security Barrier,” about a 2019 listening tour for American-Jewish leaders to help them better understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The article appeared in The Jewish Week’s annual “Israel Now” section.
The Jewish Week’s sister publication, New Jersey Jewish News, also was honored at the online ceremony held July 2. NJJN senior writer Johanna Ginsberg received a first-place award for Excellence in American Jewish History, for a Jan. 24, 2019 story about a group of Bavarian high school students who tracked down descendants of Jewish German citizens whose drivers’ licenses — which turned up in a government office in 2017 — were confiscated in 1938.
Ginsberg also received a second-place award for Excellence in Personality Profiles, for a June 26, 2019 story about the French Legion of Honor medal awarded to World War II veteran Lester Bornstein, the father of Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S.
AJPA also recognized NJJN managing editor Shira Vickar-Fox, deputy managing editor Lori Silberman Brauner, former bureau chief Debra Rubin, staff writer Jed Weisberger, and Ginsberg with an honorable mention in the American Jewish History category. Their profiles of five New Jersey residents who contributed to the birth of the Jewish state in 1948 appeared in NJJN’s “Israel Now” section, edited by Vickar-Fox.
And NJJN Editor Gabe Kahn received an honorable mention for Excellence in Writing about Sports for “Bill Buckner and the unforgiving glare of history” (June 6, 2019), which notes that Jewish values instruct us to celebrate the good in people, rather than fixate on their flaws.
