Sarah Stein has been awarded a National Jewish Book Award for her work as the co-author of "Sephardi Lives: A Documentary History, 1700-1950." Stein was honored in the category of Sephardic culture and was given the Mimi S. Frank Award.
Stein is a professor of history at UCLA and vice chair for undergraduate affairs in the Department of History. She received her Applied Baccalaureate from Brown University and went on to earn a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Her research focuses on Jewish cultural diversity in the modern period. Stein has published several books, including "Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce," which won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Another of her books, "Making Jews Modern: the Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires," won the Salo Wittmayer Baron Prize for best first book in Jewish studies.
"Sephardi Lives" uses more than 150 primary sources to examine the cultural and historical diversity of Sephardic Jews, those who fled medieval Spain and Portugal. The National Jewish Book Awards began in 1950 and have recognized such authors as Philip Roth and Elie Wiesel. Awards are given in more than 18 different categories, recognizing works of fiction, history, women's studies and many others.
