Anita Shapira and Elana Maryles Sztokman, two Brandeis University Press authors, have been named winners of the 2012 National Jewish Book Award by the Jewish Book Council.
Shapira won the award for her work "tracing the development of the state of Israel from the origins of the Zionist movement to the present," according to a press release from BrandeisNOW.

Shapira is a professor emerita at Tel Aviv University, as well as a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.

She is an Israel Prize laureate in history, and she focuses primarily on various aspects of Zionism and Israeli culture, according to the Israel Democracy Institute's webite.

Shapira's work on Israel: A History was published as part of the Schusterman Series in Israel Studies, according to BrandeisNow.

"This was a major project of the Schusterman Center-to provide a much needed text for students and an enlightened public throughout the world," Prof. Ilan Troen (NEJS), director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, was quoted as saying in the press release.

"For all the discourse about Israel, there has, until Anita Shapira's book, been no satisfying text that would weave together in an elegant fashion the political and cultural history of the country as well as place Israeli history within the Arab-Israeli conflict," Troen continued.

"I am gratified that all the people at Brandeis who believed in me and my work and supported me all along were not disappointed," said Shapira in an email to the Justice.

"In Israel, my name is well known, but in the States I was known only to the small circle of scholars in Israel studies, who were familiar with my work," she said.

"So maybe this book and its recognition will bring my work to the attention of a broader circle," she continued.

Sztokman won the Barbara Dobkin Award in the women's studies category for her book, The Men's Section: Orthodox Jewish Men in an Egalitarian World.

The executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, Sztokman is a writer, researcher, educator, and organizational consultant who has been active in Orthodox Feminism for the past 17 years.

Sztokman holds a doctorate in gender and education from Hebrew University, according to the JOFA website.

According to BrandeisNOW, Sztokman's dissertation while at Hebrew University focused on on the "identity development of adolescent religious girls." Sztokman then continued her research, supported by a grant from the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, which eventually became the prize-winning book.

In an email to the Justice, Sztokman recounted some reflections on winning such a prestigious award.

"I'm thrilled and honored to receive the ... award. I'm so grateful to the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute for giving me opportunities to pursue my research, and also to Barbara Dobkin for supporting gender research. And of course grateful to the National Jewish Book Council," she wrote.

Sztokman continued, relating the interest and implications of her award-winning book.

"I'm also excited that the award for women's studies is going to a book that is actually about men's gender identities.

I think it marks an important turning point in the work on gender in society."

The Men's Section focuses on the sociological phenomenon of Orthodox Jewish men who connect themselves to egalitarian or quasi-egalitarian religious enterprises, supporting the reconstruction of both male and female roles without leaving the Orthodox religious world," according to BrandeisNOW.

Sztokman concluded her email by writing:

"It's about working to create a more compassionate society, in which we live not by imposed gender scripts, but guided by courage and conscience."