A Picturesque Look at Prof. Jacob Katz on his 10th Yahrzeit

This weekend, students of Jewish history around the world will commemorate the tenth yahrzeit of the great Professor Jacob Katz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which will take place on Thursday (29 May 2008/24 Iyyar 5768). Enjoy the pictures and see my comments below.

above picture is © János Kőbányai

above picture is © János Kőbányai

above picture is © János Kőbányai

This weekend, students of Jewish history around the world will commemorate the tenth yahrzeit of the great Professor Jacob Katz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which will take place on Thursday (29 May 2008/24 Iyyar 5768). As arguably ‘the most distinguished Jewish historian of the twentieth century,’ Prof. Katz has squarely secured himself a permanent place at the junction of Heinrich Graetz and Simon Dubnow in the great modern Jewish historiographical debate (ve-hamavin yavin). Prof. Katz’s more than 300 bibliographical entries are available on the website created and hosted by his sons.

To honor the memory of Prof. Jacob Katz, a conference began today (at both the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University) entitled: “Hungarian Jewry-Politics and Modernization – An International Workshop: In Memory of Professor Jacob Katz (1904-1998) on the Tenth Anniversary of His Passing,” sponsored by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Israel Academy of Sciences. In addition, this weekend I will be hosting a Shabbat afternoon gathering at my apartment in Washington Heights, NY; all who are interested in attending should please contact me via email. All are encouraged to prepare a text for discussion and refreshments will, of course, be served. (Similar gatherings can be organized throughout the world.)

According to Dr. Jeffrey Woolf of Bar-Ilan University (in a comment left at my Michtavim blog some months ago), at the evening of discussion on the occasion of the publication of Katz’s Goy Shel Shabbat (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1983), Prof. Katz remarked that he is glad that he isn't known by the title of his seforim -- like the Hatam Sofer, Nodah B'Yehudah, et.al. -- lest he would be referred to as "the Shabbes Goy.” According to Woolf, however, Prof. Katz “prefaced his comment by saying that the first person to whom it was applied was to Adolf Buchler, who wrote Der Galilaische am Haaretz,” published in 1906. Yet, as suggested to me several months ago (by the weekly Rosh Ha-Chabura, shlita,) some thirty-eight years prior to Buchler’s work, Dostoevsky published his enigmatic novel, The Idiot.

As a youth, Prof. Katz studied for over two years at the famed Pressburg Yeshiva, founded by the Hatam Sofer and headed by his descendants; and the 1927 broadside of the yeshiva’s ‘dialectic chevra’, from the Katz family Archives, is available above. Regarding Prof. Katz’s student experiences at the Pressburg Yeshiva – and the students’ questionably brash comments regarding the deprivation of the Hatam Sofer’s famed dynastic legacy – see Jacob Katz, With My Own Eyes: The Autobiography of an Historian (Hanover, N.H.: Brandeis University Press, 1995), [copy was out of the library, but the source is there].

In perhaps a fulfillment of the Biblical injunction of Isaiah 30:20 (“V'Hayu Einecha Ro'ot Et Morecha – and your eyes shall see your teachers”), for additional pictures of Prof. Katz, including those that adorned the cover of Jay M. Harris, ed., The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and His Work (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2002) – special thanks are extended to Prof. Michael K. Silber of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for his assistance in obtaining the pictures from the children of the late Prof. Jacob Katz – see the pictures above. If you would like any of these photographs to beautify your wall, or simply a PDF or JPG version of any of the pictures, please let me know.

As is widely and commonly known, there have been countless tributes written, delivered, and published in memory of Prof. Katz. For two wide-ranging collections, see the articles collected in Jay M. Harris, ed., The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and His Work (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2002); and, more recently, Israel Bartal and Shmuel Feiner, eds., Historiography Reappraised: New Views of Jacob Katz’s Oeuvre (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar and Leo Baeck Institute, 2008; Hebrew).

I am, of course, interested in hearing any of your unique memories of Professor Katz. I never met him and have only known of his work through his writings and his students, with whom I have studied. Yehi Zikhro Barukh.