‘The ball dreams of the sky’
I find myself forced to do something that makes me uncomfortable, but I have to do it.
I have to brag.
About us, at the Jewish Standard and the New Jersey Jewish News. Four of us won Rockower awards for excellence in Jewish journalism, given by the American Jewish Press Association. Altogether, we won nine awards.
It’s not just those of us who won this year, or any year, who are responsible for those wins. It’s everyone at the paper — the art department, the sales reps, the office staff, the publisher. We are all responsible for everything we do. We are small, but we are mighty.
We also are indebted to the people who trust us enough to allow us to tell their stories, and to those first-person writers who trust us enough to tell their own stories on our pages.
So — here are the awards, and the stories behind them.
Ruth Roth won the first-place award for excellence in single commentary for “His story ended but mine continues.” It’s a brave, beautifully written essay on her son’s death, her grief, and her renewed ability to live in this unfiltered world holding her son’s memory close but also moving forward, even at times with joy.
Dr. Gary Rendsburg won the second-place award in that category, for “The patina of democracy.” It’s a deeply felt, fact-filled opinion piece about faculty unions at Rutgers University, where he holds the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair in Jewish History, voting to ask the university to divest from companies supporting the Israeli military and to break its relationship with Tel Aviv University.
Lori Fein won a first-place award for excellence in writing about young families for “Little gorilla learns to read.” That’s one of her many funny, accurate, honest columns about life with her husband and their five daughters. She’s real, she’s easy to identify with, and she’s hilarious.
I won a first-place award for excellence in writing about women in “Honoring Israel’s heroines and artists.” It’s about Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll, an extraordinary woman, with charisma, penetrating intelligence, and a powerful will to do good. She’s the founder of the Jewish Life Photo Bank, which shows real Orthodox Jews living real lives. She created “Women of Iron,” about women whose heroic work saved lives and sanity during and after October 7.
I won a first for excellence in writing about Jewish life and thought for “Learning from our own history.” It tells the story of Izabella Tabarovsky, a Russian-American-Israeli who left the Soviet Union but retains a first-hand understanding of antisemitism — and how to fight it.
I won another first, for excellence in personality profiles, for “A survivor’s journey.” It’s about Marta Gotthard’s life, from Transylvania to Bergen-Belsen to Switzerland to a doctorate in structural engineering in Romania to MetroWest. It’s an “and then what???” kind of life.
My last first was the award for excellence in long form writing. It’s for “The ball dreams of the sky,” a lovely title that I did not write. It’s the title of the book of poems written by Henry Schipper. My story was an interview with Henry, the son of Holocaust survivors with jaw-dropping stories — to be clear, every survivor’s story is jaw-dropping. He went on to have an interesting but not particularly unusual life, and felt increasingly drawn to write poetry about his parents and about baseball, which writers love, he said, “because it’s novelistic. Every game is at least a short story.”
I won a second-place award for excellence in interfaith relations reporting for “Envisioning unity,” about Rabbi Abigail Treu of Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange and the Reverend William D. Carter III of Franklin-St. John’s United Methodist Church in Newark. Rabbi Treu and some congregants went to church on a Sunday to begin building a relationship. I joined them, and felt the friendly interest in each other that filled the room. It’s an ongoing process, and a worthy one.
My last award, an honorable mention for excellence in news obituaries, was for “Goodbye Captain America.” It was about Steve Rogers, the president of the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly. Steve was a smart, kind, creative, thoughtful, and formidably tireless man, whose devotion to the JCC was lifelong and transformative. His sudden, early death was a huge loss not only to his family but also to his community. He had so much more left to do. (That story also was the only one to appear in only one of our papers, the Jewish Standard. All the others were in both the Standard and the New Jersey Jewish News, and covered both communities.)
So I want to thank everyone on our staff, the other winners, our friends and supporters and advertisers, and the people who allow us to tell their stories. That’s what makes community. We are all in this together. —JP