Steven Theodore Katz (born August 24, 1944) is an American
philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
and scholar. He is the founding director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original cam ...
, United States, where he holds the Alvin J. and Shirley Slater Chair in Jewish and Holocaust Studies.
Biography
Katz was born in
Jersey City, New Jersey
Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.University of Cambridge, England in 1972.
Prior to his appointment at Boston University, Prof. Katz taught at
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...
from 1972 to 1984. He joined the faculty of
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
in 1984 through 1996 as a Professor of Near Eastern Studies (Judaica); during the years 1985–1989 he served as Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies and Director of the Jewish Studies Program. He has also held visiting posts at
Yale
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
, the
University of California at Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...
,
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...
, the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...
,
Yeshiva University
Yeshiva University is a private Orthodox Jewish university with four campuses in New York City."About YU on the Yeshiva Universi ...
,
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
and Warwick University.
He currently edits ''Modern Judaism: A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience'', published by
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...
mysticism
Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in ...
, and has contributed to and edited a number of books dealing with mysticism. He distinguishes two basic approaches to the scientific study and understanding of mysticism: an "essentialist model" and a "contextualist model".
The essentialist model argues that mystical experience is independent of the sociocultural, historical and religious context in which it occurs, and regards all mystical experience in its essence to be the same.
The contextualist model states that mystical experiences are shaped by the concepts "which the mystic brings to, and which shape, his experience". What is being experienced is being determined by the expectations and the conceptual background of the mystic.
Jewish studies
Katz has argued that
the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...
is the only
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the ...
that has occurred in history, and defines Holocaust to include only "the travail of European Jewry" and not other victims of the Nazis. He has argued this in depth in ''The Holocaust in Historical Context''. In 2019 the second volume was released and the third is in the works.
Katz is the editor of ''Modern Judaism'', an academic quarterly. He was on the editorial board of the ''
Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust
The ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust'' (1990) has been called "the most recognized reference book on the Holocaust". It was published in an English-language translated edition by Macmillan in tandem with the Hebrew language original edition pu ...
'' (NY: Macmillan, 1990,
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
and
English-language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the i ...
editions).
Professor Katz acts as an American representative on the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...
sponsored International Task Force on the Holocaust. Additionally, he still holds a position as Chair of the Holocaust Commission of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, after previously serving on the United States Holocaust Museum's Academic Committee for five years as their Chair.
Selected publications
* ''Jewish Philosophers'' (Bloch Publishing, 1975)
* ''Jewish Ideas and Concepts'' (Schocken Books, 1977)
* ''Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis'' (Oxford University Press, 1978)
* ''Studies by Samuel Horodezky'' (Arno Press, 1980)
* ''Saadiah Gaon'' (Arno Press, 1980)
* ''Maimonides: Selected Essays'' (Arno Press, 1980)
* ''Collected papers of Jacob Guttmann'' (Arno Press, 1980)
* ''Jewish Neo-Platonism'' (Arno Press, 1980)
* ''Medieval Jewish Philosophy'' (Arno Press, 1980)
* ''Mysticism and Religious Traditions'' (Oxford University Press, 1983)
* ''Post-Holocaust Dialogues: critical studies in modern Jewish thought'' (New York University Press, 1983)
* ''The Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century Religious Thought in the West" 3 Vols. (Cambridge University Press, 1988)
* ''Anti-semitism in Times of Crisis'' (New York University Press, 1991)
* ''Frontiers of Jewish Thought'' (B'nai B'rith Books, 1992)
* ''Mysticism and Language'' (Oxford University Press, 1992)
* ''Historicism, the Holocaust and Zionism: critical studies in modern Jewish thought and history'' (New York University Press, 1992)
* ''Interpreters of Judaism in the Late Twentieth Century'' (B'nai B'rith Books, 1993)
* ''The Holocaust and Comparative History'' (Leo Baeck Institute, 1993)
* ''The Holocaust in Historical Context'', Vol. 1 (Oxford University Press, 1994)
* ''American rabbi : the life and thought of Jacob B. Agus'' (New York University Press, 1997)
* ''Mysticism and Sacred Scripture'' (Oxford University Press, 2000)
* ''Kontinuität und Diskontinität zwischen christlichen und nationalsozialistischem Antisemitismus (In German and English)'' (J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 2001)
* ''The Impact of the Holocaust on Jewish Theology'' (New York University Press, 2005)
* ''The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period'' (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
* ''Obliged by Memory: Literature, Religion, Ethics'' (Syracuse University Press, 2006)
* ''Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses During and After the Holocaust'' (Oxford University Press, 2007)
* ''The shtetl: new evaluations'' (New York University Press, 2007)
Awards
* 1984 -
National Jewish Book Award
The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1944, is an organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature.University of Tübingen
The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (german: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; la, Universitas Eberhardina Carolina), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-W ...
) awarded by Professor Volker Drehsen with an address entitled "Continuity and Discontinuity between Christian and Nazi Antisemitism"
* 2007 -