Steven T. Katz

Abstract

Abstract Steven T. Katz was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on August 24, 1944, into an orthodox Jewish family. He received a traditional yeshiva education in his youth and then went on to receive his B.A. from Rutgers University (New Jersey) in 1966, his M.A. from New York University in 1967, and his Ph.D. from Cambridge University, England, in 1972. He began his teaching career at Dartmouth College in 1972. In 1984 he moved to Cornell University where he chaired the Department of Near Eastern Studies and directed the Jewish Studies Program. In 1996 he was invited to become the director of the Judaic Studies Program at Boston University, a position he still holds. He has also been a visiting professor at, among other universities, Yale, the Hebrew University, and the University of Pennsylvania. His scholarly work has been concentrated in three areas: (a) modem Jewish thought; (b) Holocaust studies; and (c) comparative mysticism. In the first he has published, among other studies, two collections of essays, Post-Holocaust Dialogues: Critical Studies in Modem Jewish Thought (New York, 1983) and Historicism, the Holocaust, and Zionism: Critical Studies in Modem Jewish Thought and History (New York, 1992). In the area of Holocaust studies he is the author of a multivolume study entitled The Holocaust in Historical Context, volume 1 of which appeared in 1994 and volumes 2 and 3 of which will appear shortly. In the area of comparative mysticism, Katz has edited and contributed to four collections of original essays, as well as an anthology of mystical sources, all published by Oxford University Press.