Jewish Book Council names Sami Rohr Prize finalists

The Jewish Book Council announced its five finalists for the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.

The $100,000 prize, presented annually since 2007, is awarded to fiction and non-fiction writers in alternating years, with this year’s focus on non-fiction.

The finalists announced Wednesday are Gal Beckerman for “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry”; Jonathan B. Krasner for “The Benderly Boys and American Jewish Education”; James Loeffler for “The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire”; Ruth Franklin for “A Thousand Darknesses:  Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction”; and Abigail Green for “Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero.”

The winner will be announced Feb. 15.