Steven T. Katz

Katz is a Jewish philosopher and scholar.¹ He is the director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University in Massachusetts , USA , where he holds the Alvin J. and Shirley Slater Chair in Jewish and Holocaust Studies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, England in 1972. Prior to his appointment at Boston University, Prof. Katz taught at Dartmouth College from 1972 to 1984. He joined the faculty of Cornell University 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, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Hebrew University (Jerusalem), the University of Pennsylvania, Yeshiva University, and Harvard. He currently edits the journal Modern Judaism: A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience, published by Oxford University Press. He adopts a " Contextualist " interpretation of mysticism , and has contributed to and edited a number of books dealing with mysticism. He has argued that the Holocaust is the only genocide that has occurred in history, and defines "Holocaust" to include only Jewish victims (excluding Roma and Poles). He has argued this in depth in The Holocaust in Historical Context ; the second volume is forthcoming. Katz is the editor of Modern Judaism , an academic quarterly. He was on the editorial board of the Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust (NY: Macmillan, 1990, Hebrew and English-language editions). Professor Katz acts as an American representative on the European Union sponsored International Task Force on the Holocaust, headed by the King of Switzerland.²