Dovid Katz | |
|---|---|
הירשע־דוד כ״ץ | |
 Portrait of Katz, 2010 | |
| Born | 1956 (age 68–69) |
| Relatives | Menke Katz |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Yeshivah of Flatbush |
| Alma mater | University of London |
| Thesis | Explorations of the History of the Semitic Component in Yiddish (1982) |
| Website | Official website |
Dovid Katz (Yiddish:הירשע־דוד כ״ץ, alsoהירשע־דוד קאַץ,Hirshe-Dovid Kats,[ˌhirʃɛ-ˈdɔvidˈkɑt͡s], born 9 May 1956) is an American-bornVilnius-based scholar, author, and educator specializing inYiddish language andliterature,Lithuanian-Jewish culture, andthe Holocaust inEastern Europe.
Born in theNew York City borough ofBrooklyn into theLitvak (Lithuanian-Jewish) family of Yiddish and English poetMenke Katz,[1] Dovid Katz attended the Brooklyn day schoolsHebrew Institute of Boro Park andEast Midwood Jewish Day School, and thenYeshivah of Flatbush High School, where he led a student protest calling for the inclusion of Yiddish in American Hebrew day school curricula, and founded and edited the Yiddish-English student journal "Aleichem Sholem" (1972–1974).[2][3] He majored in linguistics atColumbia University, where he graduated in 1978, having studied concurrently at New York's Herzliah Yiddish Teachers' Seminary. He relocated toLondon in 1978 to work on a doctorate (completed in 1982) on the origins of the Semitic component in the Yiddish language at theUniversity of London.[citation needed]
For eighteen years (1978–1996) he taught Yiddish Studies at Oxford, building the Oxford Programme in Yiddish. His contributions include initiating a new four-week summer course[4] at four levels of language instruction (in 1982), the annual Stencl Lecture (from 1983),[5][6] annual winter symposiums (from 1985);[7]University of Oxford BA, MSt and MPhil options (from 1982), and a doctoral program (from 1984), these being concentrated in the university's Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages.[8] Some of his former doctoral students are today professors of Yiddish, atIndiana University (Bloomington) andDüsseldorf among others. He founded the seriesWinter Studies in Yiddish in English (vol. 1 appeared in 1987),[9] andOksforder Yidish (or "Oxford Yiddish"), entirely in Yiddish (vol. 1 appeared in 1990).[10] His posts, at theOxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies (renamed the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies) were instructor and junior fellow (1978–1982), senior research fellow and director of Yiddish studies (1983–1994). In 1994 he founded the Oxford Institute for Yiddish Studies and served as its research director until 1997.[11] He was Research Fellow atSt. Antony's College Oxford from 1986 to 1997, and a member of the Modern Language Faculty's Graduate Studies Committee from 1984 to 1997.
After an initial trip to his ancestralLithuania andBelarus in 1990 (during which he negotiated an agreement[12] enabling Lithuanian students to enroll in Oxford Jewish studies courses), Katz pioneered the mounting of in-situ post-Holocaust Yiddish dialectological and folkloristic expeditions in Eastern Europe. He focused on the "Lithuanian lands" (Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, etc.) and continues work on his Atlas of Northeastern Yiddish.[13] He has amassed thousands of hours of recorded interviews with "the last of the Yiddish Mohicans" in these regions but as far as is known has thus far failed to find a permanent home for the materials. In early 2013 he began posting clips from his interviews of Boro Park Yiddish speakers gleaned from his return trips to his native Brooklyn.[14]
His publications on Yiddish language include his "Grammar of the Yiddish Language" (London, 1987) and his book in Yiddish, "Tikney takones. Fragn fun yidisher stilistik" (Oxford, 1993),[15] both of which aimed to enhance the teaching of Yiddish as a vibrant language both spoken and for new literary and academic works, even if in (and for) small circles. In both works, he advocated adescriptivist stance, rejecting what he considered to be the excessive purism prevalent in the field, particularly in New York. He also (controversially) championed the traditionalist variant of modern Yiddish orthography, and was the author of the "Code of Yiddish Spelling" (Oxford, 1992).[16] He twice founded and directed (one-time only) Yiddish teacher training programs: at Oxford, a one-year program in 1996, and at Vilnius, an intensive course in spring 2005.
For a nonspecialist English readership he wrote a history of the language and its culture, "Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish" (Basic Books 2004, revised edition with added academic apparatus, 2007), which attracted both acclaim and robust criticism, particularly over his predictions of a vernacular future for Yiddish based in Haredi communities, and his contention thatmodern Hebrew could not replace the European-nuanced vibrancy of Yiddish.[17] For years he wrote regular columns for the Forverts (1990s), and in more recent years for theAlgemeiner Journal,[18] which seemed to have stopped with the departure of Y.Y. Jacobson as editor around 2010. In 2015, his bookYiddish and Power was published in the UK by Palgrave Macmillan.[19]
He is the author of a number of articles on Yiddish in encyclopedias (includingThe YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe)[20][21] and book introductions, including the Yivo's reprint ofAlexander Harkavy's trilingual Yiddish-English-Hebrew dictionary.[22][23]
After a year as visiting professor atYale University (1998–1999), Katz relocated toVilnius in 1999 in order to take up a new chair in Yiddish language, literature and culture atVilnius University, and to found the university's Center for Stateless Cultures,[24] which he directed for its first two years. He had relocated his old Oxford Yiddish summer program to Vilnius a year earlier (summer 1998). In 2001, he co-founded the Vilnius Yiddish Institute at Vilnius University and remained its research director and primary instructor until 2010. His works on Litvak (Lithuanian Jewish) culture include the folio volume "Lithuanian Jewish Culture" (Baltos lankos, Vilnius 2004, revised edition 2010), "Windows to a Lost Jewish Past: Vilna Book Stamps" (Versus aureus, Vilnius 2008), and "Seven Kingdoms of the Litvaks" (International Cultural Program Center, Vilnius 2009).[25] In 2009 he directed the "Jewish Lithuania" program for Summer Literary Seminars in Vilnius. He has proposed "Litvak Studies"[26] as a potential program of study.
He began to write short stories in Yiddish following his father's death in 1991, and published four collections in book form under the nom de plumeHeershadovid Menkes (Yiddish:הירשע־דוד מעינקעס—Hirshe-Dovid Meynkes): Eldra Don, 1992; The Flat Peak, 1993; Tales of the Misnagdim from Vilna Province, 1996; Einstein from Svir and Other Yiddish Short Stories, 2020. After experimenting with modern themes in the 1990s, he abandoned them for the vanished life of old Jewish Lithuania, to some extent violating norms of modern Yiddish to write works set in older Jewish Lithuania in local dialect.
Awards for his fiction came from within the secular Yiddish environment: the Hirsh Rosenfeld Award (Canadian Jewish Congress, 1994), the Zhitlovsky Prize (Ikuf, 1996), theItzik Manger Prize (1997) and theRubinlicht Prize (2020).[27]
In 1994 he founded at Oxford the then sole literary monthly magazine in Yiddish, "Yiddish Pen"[28] and edited its first 27 issues.[29] It did not, however, usher in the literary revival he had hoped for, and his own works of fiction received little recognition outside the narrow world of secular Yiddish culture. In 2001-2002 he was aGuggenheim Fellow inYiddish literature. A number of translated volumes appeared. In English: City in the Moonlight: Stories of the Old-time Lithuanian Jews (2012);[30] East Broadway to Whitechapel (2025).[31] In German: Ostjüdische Geschichten aus dem alten Litauen.[32] In Italian: Nóah Anshel dell'altro mondo (2002).[33]
Katz, taken aback by the poverty he found among the last aged Yiddish speakers in Eastern Europe (many of them "flight survivors" who survived the war by fleeing to theSoviet Union, hence not eligible for aid under the narrow definition of "Holocaust survivor"), alerted the wider world to the issue in a 1999 op-ed[34] in the Forward, which was cited by JudgeEdward R. Korman in theSwiss Banks settlement[35] in the U.S. District Court in 2004. Katz began to work closely with theAmerican Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) on these issues, and he helped the founders of the Survivor Mitzvah Project by a group based inSanta Monica, California.
In 2012, he took part in the Channel 4 reality series "Jewish Mum of the Year" as one of the judging panel alongsideTracy-Ann Oberman and Richard Ferrer.[36] Most of the reviews of his own appearance judged it negatively[37] and he did not think much of the program himself.
In 2013, he initiated a "Virtual Mini Museum of Old Jewish Vilna" with item descriptions in Yiddish and index in English.
In June 2014, two articles in Tablet magazine focused on the recent history and status of Yiddish linguistics, including his own contributions (and controversies).[38] Katz promptly responded (in Yiddish).[39]
In 2015, he embarked on a project to translate the (Hebrew) Bible into Lithuanian Yiddish.[40] By early 2021, he had posted draft translations ofeighteen books. Only two appeared in hard copy pamphlet form:the Book of Ruth in 2017, and, in memory of his mother, who died in 2019,the Book of Esther, in 2020, in which some of the more preposterous characters in the biblical narrative speak an extreme dialect form of Lithuanian Yiddish.
In 2018, to honor the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the modern Lithuanian republic in 1918, he initiateda new online Yiddish "mini-museum" stressing interwar Yiddish-Lithuanian multicultural and bilingual life.
The same year, he launched online a draft version of hisYiddish Cultural Dictionary, which is a free online English-Yiddish dictionary that stresses cultural specificities, with all discussions of entries in Yiddish; rooted in his descriptivist perspective in Yiddish stylistics, it contains detailed commentary about usage in Standard Yiddish, and also in both Northeastern (Lithuanian) and Central (Mideastern / Polish) dialects of Yiddish.[41] By early 2025, it had around 40,000 entries and around 800,000 words of text.
In late 2021, he initiated theLithuanian Yiddish Video Archive (LYVA) by putting on line several hundred (unedited) videos from his thirty years of expeditions to the last native speakers of Northeastern ("Lithuanian") Yiddish in Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, northeastern Poland and eastern Ukraine.[42]
After observing the Vilnius scene for years, Dovid Katz began in 2008 to publicly challenge thedouble genocide theory ofWorld War II and the accusations against Holocaust survivors who survived by joining theJewish partisans. In a Rothschild Foundation London seminar in February that year he proposed the term "Holocaust obfuscation" for an East European trend to downgrade the Holocaust into one of two purportedly equal genocides (without actually denying any deaths); he refined the term in a 2009 paper.[43] When, in May 2008, Lithuanian prosecutors launched investigations of two more elderly Holocaust survivors, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky andRachel Margolis, Katz embarked on a new activist phase of his life. He became a staunch advocate for the accused Holocaust survivors who were under investigation, and played a role in mobilizing the Western diplomatic community in Vilnius to support them. Results, achieved in partnership with Vilnius-based diplomats, included a reception by the Irish ambassador for Ms. Brantsovsky, awarding her a certificate,[44] on 3 June 2008 (the same day thePrague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism was signed), and a certificate of merit[45] from the American ambassador. This was followed in August that year by a letter from nine NATO-member embassies[46] toRachel Margolis inRehovot, Israel, and, in 2010, by a letter from seven European ambassadors[47] that noted the legalization of swastikas that year, renewedHolocaust denial, and the attempts to "equalize" Nazi and Soviet crimes.
Professor Katz was apparently the first to publicly challenge the 2008 Prague Declaration in two May 2009 op-eds, inThe Jewish Chronicle[48] andThe Irish Times.[49] He subsequently contributed articles toThe Guardian (in 2010),[50]Tablet magazine (2010),[51]The Jerusalem Post (2011),[52] the London Jewish News (2012),[53]The Times of Israel (2012),[54] and other publications.[55] He has lectured on these issues at theJewish National Fund inAdelaide,Australia (May 2011),[56]Lund University inSweden (May 2010),[57]Monash University inMelbourne (June 2011),[58] Musée d'Aquitaine in Bordeaux (March 2012),[59]Rutgers University (Nov 2008),[60]University of Pennsylvania (Nov 2008),[61]University of South Carolina at Columbia (March 2011),[62] theWoodrow Wilson Center's Kennan Institute inWashington, D.C. (March 2011),[63]University of London (April 2009),[64] andYeshiva University (March 2011),[65] among others.[66]
His professorship atVilnius University was terminated after eleven years in 2010 after he published several articles critical of Lithuanian prosecutors' campaign against Holocaust survivors who joined the partisans. He began (and continues) tolecture quite widely. In 2016 was appointed professor (on an adjunct basis) atVilnius Gediminas Technical University (VGTU),in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies, where he taught courses in Creative Writing and Ethics, until taking leave in 2020.
In September 2009 Katz launched the openly partisan online journalHolocaustInTheBaltics.com, which was renamed a year laterDefendingHistory.com, and came to include contributions by several dozen authors;[67] it has sections on the regional glorification of localNazi collaborators,[68] and the related "exotic tourism"[69] as well as Opinion,[70] Books,[71] Film[72] and History[73] sections. Over time, DefendingHistory has also become one of the addresses for resources in Litvak (Lithuanian Jewish) affairs,[74] including culture, history, news, tourism and "dark tourism."
In 2012 he co-authored (withDanny Ben-Moshe)The Seventy Years Declaration,[75] signed on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of theWannsee Conference by 71 European parliamentarians (MPs and MEPs, including Conservatives and Liberals as well as Social Democrats and Labor, also—eight Lithuanian Social Democratic parliamentarians). He was invited to present it formally toMartin Schulz,[76] president of theEuropean Parliament, inStrasbourg on March 14, 2012.[77]
Katz's work onthe Holocaust in Lithuania and related antisemitism issues was among the subjects of a 2010 BBC world service program byWendy Robbins,[78] and a 2012 Australian documentary film by Marc Radomsky andDanny Ben-Moshe.[79] He has participated in various public debates on these subjects,[80][81][82] and has publicly disagreed with Yale ProfessorTimothy D. Snyder on the related history, in a 2010Guardian debate preceding publication of Snyder'sBloodlands in a book review inEast European Jewish Studies (2011),[83][84] and an open letter[85] during the controversy over the reburial with full honors[86] in 2012 of the 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister in Lithuania. He also engaged in public debate with the director of YIVO[87] and the Economist'sEdward Lucas.[88][89]
His work in the field ofhuman rights has included on-site protest and monitoring of state-sanctioned city-centernationalist parades inVilnius[90] andKaunas[91] in Lithuania, andWaffen-SS parades[92] in the Latvian capitalRiga, taking note also of anti-Polish, anti-Russian, anti-Roma and anti-gay signs, slogans and publications.[93] In 2013 he added anLGBT rights section[94] toDefending History. Twice, in 2010[95] and in 2011, he appeared inBudapest[96] to report on what he regarded as "sensationally absurd" trials of Holocaust historian and Nazi-hunterEfraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Center's Israel office, on charges of "libel" leveled by a twice-convicted Nazi war criminal whom Dr. Zuroff had exposed. On the subject of free speech, he has been a vocal critic of Lithuania's 2010 law[97] forbidding the denial or trivialization of Soviet and Nazi genocide, which he believes, in agreement withLeonidas Donskis,[98] to constitute criminalization of debate. When the law was applied to a left-wing politician with whom he disagreed wholly on the 1991 events in question, Katz nevertheless felt it important to speak out for free speech,[99] and, in a reply to Rokas Grajauskas in Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review[100] made clear his view that objecting to Holocaust Obfuscation in no way signifies reluctance to expose Stalinist crimes.
In recent years, Katz has registered concern regarding purported policy shifts toward Holocaust Obfuscation and Double Genocide by theUnited States Department of State, in articles inTablet (2010),[101]The Guardian (2010)[102]Algemeiner Journal (2011),[103]The Times of Israel (2012)[104] and a list of publications maintained onDefendingHistory.com.[105] He also spoke out regarding alliances binding the UK's Conservative Party with controversial East European right wing politics, inThe Irish Times (2009),[106]The Guardian (2010),The Jewish Chronicle (2010),[107] and theLondon Jewish News (2012).[108] Analogously, he challengedIsraeli foreign policy on alleged acequiscence to Holocaust Obfuscation in return for diplomatic support, in venues including theIsrael Journal of Foreign Affairs,[109]The Jerusalem Post,The Times of Israel andDefendingHistory.com.[110]
In the spring of 2011, Katz was Jan Randa Visiting Scholar at the Australian Center for Jewish Civilization (ACJC) atMonash University in Melbourne where he lectured on both Yiddish Studies and Holocaust issues. He has worked to define the new and "nuanced" elitist East European antisemitism and its success in attracting unsuspecting westerners to help provide political cover. He presented findings at Yale University[111] and theWoodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars[112] in 2011, and at a December 13, 2012 ISGAP event atFordham University[113] inNew York City. He participated in the April 18, 2013 seminar on "Red equals Brown issues"[114] in Berlin, and a May 27–28, 2013 conference in Riga on Holocaust commemoration in post-communist Eastern Europe.[115] A Spring 2016 lecture tour included lectures on Yiddish, Litvak and Holocaust topics at the University of Toronto and York University in Toronto; UCLA in Los Angeles; ISGAP, Baruch College, and the Mid-Manhattan New York Public Library in New York; Fairfield University and Yale in Connecticut.[116] In Sept. 2016 he wasappointed professor at another university in Vilnius, VGTU, in its Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies.
Germany's Federal Agency for Civic Education (FACE, German: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb)) hired Katz in 2021 toclassify today's historical significance of eighty years since Operation Barbarossa (Germany's attack on the Soviet Union) where the Nazis (prior to the"Wannseekonferenz") experienced that Holocaust in the Eastern Territories("the Bloodlands") was "doable", not least because nationalist leaders in the Baltic States and Ukraine, hated the Soviet Union and Russia much more than collaborating with Nazis. Bandera, Norieka and Skirpa whose ideas were responsible for mass killings of Jews and Poles, still today (2023) are honored by street names and plaques as freedom fighters in their respective countries.
Unexpectedly for many in his circles, he became, in 2015, a staunch opponent of plans to locate a national convention center on the grounds of Vilnius's 15th century-origin old Jewish cemetery. His activities included helping inspire an array of international published protest statements,[117] maintaining a monitoring section inDefending History.[118] One summary of his views appeared inThe Times of Israel in late 2015.[119] He has argued that the rights of the dead, especially those in long-ago paid-for burial plots, include the right to be left in peace.
Katz keepsan online record of his published writings, and a separate list of papers on Holocaust Studies inacademic format. A few reflections on his life were recorded in April 2016 by Larry Yudelson inThe Jewish Standard,[120] and in August of the same year by Inga Liutkevičienė inBernardinai.lt.[121]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) The Swiss Banks settlement
