Steven Katz

Boston University, Philosophy, Religion, Theology, Faculty Member

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Pace University

David Ellenson ז״ל

Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion

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Daniel Wojcik

University of Oregon

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Papers by Steven Katz

The Essential Agus: The Writings of Jacob B. Agus

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The Middle Passage

The Holocaust and New World Slavery

From the early days of the American colonies, forced labor and slavery grew to become a central p... more From the early days of the American colonies, forced labor and slavery grew to become a central part of colonial economic and labor systems. Hard labor made tobacco, rice, and sugar plantations profitable. Buying and enslaving the people who supplied this labor ultimately became a lucrative and tragic part of the commerce in the maritime web that connected Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

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Rape andRassenschandeduring the Holocaust

The Holocaust and New World Slavery

Historicism, the Holocaust, and Zionism

Thoughts on the Intersection of Rape and Rassenschande during the Holocaust

The Issue of Confirmation and Disconfirmation in Jewish thought after the Shoah

Holocaust Studies, 2019

History and Halakhah

Yitz Greenberg and Modern Orthodoxy, 2019

The “Great War” and the Jewish People: A Review Essay

Modern Judaism - A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience, 2018

It is almost exactly one hundred years since the signing of the armistice that ended World War I ... more It is almost exactly one hundred years since the signing of the armistice that ended World War I on November 11, 1918. It therefore seems an appropriate time to reflect on the impact of the war on European history generally and, more specifically, on the world Jewish community. Today, for readers of this journal, our knowledge of world war is inseparably associated with World War II and the Holocaust. And given the nature of these massive and monstrous events this is neither surprising nor inappropriate. However, the reality is that World War I, in spite of now being in the shadows for us and its marginal presence in the writing of Jewish history, was a major force of fundamental transformation in Jewish life. Unlike World War II in which there were authentic "good guys" and "bad guys," and very important issues over which to fight, the "Great War" was, to a large degree, a colossal, ambiguous, blunder to which all the major European powers contributed. It occurred in a tense political climate that had been marked between 1904 and 1914 by a series of international crises and local wars. At the same time, all the major states were experiencing internal divisions and confronting serious economic problems. Though Germany is commonly blamed for the war its actions were certainly not the only cause

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Quelques réflexions sur Franz Rosenzweig

Héritages de Franz Rosenzweig, 2011

Maybaum, Ignaz. Trialogue Between Jew, Christian and Muslim. Pp. xi and 179. (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1973.)

Religious Studies, 1976

Mordecai Kaplan's Theology and the Problem of Evil

Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, and Society, 2006

is rightly acclaimed as the greatest Jewish thinker to have emerged from the American Jewish cont... more is rightly acclaimed as the greatest Jewish thinker to have emerged from the American Jewish context. Though born in Europe, he came to America as a young boy and received his most important schooling in this new environment. It is well known that, as a graduate student at Columbia University between 1900 and 1906, he was deeply influenced by the then-dominant influences of American naturalism and pragmatism-especially William James and John Dewey-which were then reinforced by the ideas of Felix Adler, on the one hand, and Henri Bergson, Émile Durkheim, and French sociology, on the other. As a result, his theological enterprise was essentially an effort to refashion Judaism through the categories supplied by these philosophical and sociological schools of thought. In making his revaluation, Kaplan showed himself to be a masterful sociologist of religion. His reconstruction of Judaism through social categories is thoughtful and provocative and has been highly influential among all branches of American Jewry. However, his construction, like all primarily sociological analyses of Judaism, is reductive and, ultimately, both deficient and defective. This is because Judaism as a religion is not exhausted in its meaning by its function; that is, functional analyses are neither the only nor the preferred forms of analysis in M

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Martin Buber’s Epistemology

International Philosophical Quarterly, 1981

The Holocaust in Historical Context. Vol. 1: The Holocaust and Mass Death before the Modern Age

History and Theory, 1996

Methodology in Basser's Studies

Review of Rabbinic Judaism, 2001

The Essential Agus

Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust. Edited by Steven T. Katz, Scholomo Biderman, and Gershon Greenberg

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2008

... 557 Arthur A. Cohen 565 The Tremendum 566 Steven T. Katz 581 Richard Rubenstein, the God of H... more ... 557 Arthur A. Cohen 565 The Tremendum 566 Steven T. Katz 581 Richard Rubenstein, the God of History, and the Logic of Judaism 582 The Crucifixion of the Jews: Ignaz Maybaum&amp;amp;#x27;s Theology of the Holocaust 594 Eliezer Berkovits&amp;amp;#x27;s Post-Holocaust Jewish Theodicy 601 ...

Linguagem, Epistemologia e Mística

HORIZONTE - Revista de Estudos de Teologia e Ciências da Religião, 2020

Esse artigo foi originalmente publicado como capítulo do livro Mysticism and Philosophical Analys... more Esse artigo foi originalmente publicado como capítulo do livro Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, organizado por Steven T. Katz e publicado pela Oxford University Press em 1978. O texto trata de questões epistemológicas da mística e problematiza uma série de concepções dessa temática, tendo por principal objetivo marcar uma maneira de abordar os dados fornecidos pelos místicos, concentrando-se especialmente na tentativa de defender a concepção de que assim como as ideias são mediadas por contextos culturais, sociais e religiosos, as experiências místicas são vivenciadas, ou como prefere dizer o autor, interpretadas, de formas diferenciadas de acordo com esses mesmos contextos.

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The Holocaust and New World Slavery

Reproduction and Miscegenation 4.1 Why this Analysis? T he analysis of slave reproduction in this... more Reproduction and Miscegenation 4.1 Why this Analysis? T he analysis of slave reproduction in this chapter has one purpose: to contrast the Th ird Reich's defi ning, uncompromising desire to destroy the Jewish People and foreclose the possibility of there being any Jewish births in the future, overagainst the concern of slavery as an institution to grow the slave population generation by generation. Th ough this discussion, and that in Chapter 5 , will lead us to many diff erent subjects, including the sensitive topics of miscegenation and Rassenschande , and will raise a variety of social, economic, and ethical concerns, they have a single, specifi c goal: to make plain that while New World slavery was a "form of life" that, though objectionable in every way, was committed, on balance, to increasing the number of those it held in bondage, the "Final Solution " in sharp contrast was all, and only, about unrestricted mass murder. While slaveholders wanted to reproduce black infants, indeed as many such infants as they could, the National Socialist regime wanted to exterminate all Jewish children. 1 4.2 Increasing the Slave Population: contra Genocide A s we have seen, many, though not all, slave owners in the American colonies from at least the fi rst decades of the eighteenth-century earnestly desired to reproduce slaves. In this ambition, they were paralleled by many, though far from all, planters in the Caribbean and Brazil, especially from 1750. Th e most convincing proof of this is provided by the details of the much-debated topic of slave breeding. By "breeding" in this context I mean to include both those practices that slave masters commonly introduced in order "to cause the fertility of the slave population to be higher than it would have been in the absence of such interference," 2 as well as the less widespread and more controversial-often https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

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Elie Wiesel: The Man and his Legacy*

Holocaust Studies, 2019

died on July 2, 2016, bringing to an end a remarkable life. He was born in the small town of Sigh... more died on July 2, 2016, bringing to an end a remarkable life. He was born in the small town of Sighet, at that time part of Romania, on September 30, 1928. His father, Shlomo, was a traditional Jew who made his living as a local merchant. He was known for his "intelligence, his perspicacity, and his kindness." Yet, late in life Elie would describe his relationship with his father as difficult and distant: "I never really knew my father. .. .. The truth is I knew little of the man I loved most in the world." 1 His mother, Sarah Feig, was a pious woman, the daughter of a Vizhnitz Hasid, who presided over the household. There were four children in the family, Eliezer, was the third youngest and the only boy. A bright youngster, he received a traditional orthodox education dominated by talmudic study. And like his friends, he was also deeply interested to study Kabbalah. He would later recall: *I would like to thank Rabbi Josef Polak and Dr. Yoel Rappel, both of whom were close friends of Elie Wiesel, for reading and commenting on this essay in draft.

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Holocaust, the

<jats:p>The specific, tragic event of the Holocaust – the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis ... more <jats:p>The specific, tragic event of the Holocaust – the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War – raises profound theological and philosophical problems, particularly problems about the existence of God and the meaning of Jewish existence. Among the thinkers who have tried to wrestle with the conceptual challenge posed by the destruction of European Jewry, three who have presented original arguments that can be termed, in a relatively strict sense, philosophical are Richard L. Rubenstein, Emil Fackenheim and Arthur A. Cohen.</jats:p> <jats:p>Rubenstein has formulated an argument that turns on the theological difficulties raised by the realities of the evil of Auschwitz and Treblinka in a world putatively created and ordered by a benign God. For him, such evil decisively refutes the traditional theological claim that a God possessed of goodness and power exists, and entails the conclusion that 'there is no [traditional] God'. In working out this conceptual position, he uses an unsatisfactory empirical theory of verification concerning religious propositions and too narrow a notion of evidence, both historical and ethical, that ultimately undermines his counterclaims and 'Death of God' affirmations.</jats:p> <jats:p>Fackenheim seeks not to defend a religious 'explanation' of the Holocaust, but rather to provide a 'response' to it that maintains the reality of God and his continued presence in human, and particularly Jewish, history. To do so, he uses Martin Buber's understanding of dialogical revelation, asserting that revelation is an ever-present possibility, and formulates his own moral-theological demand to the effect that after the Holocaust, Jewish survival is the '614th commandment' (there are 613 commandments in classical Judaism). Fackenheim's defence of this position, however, is philosophically problematic.</jats:p> <jats:p>Cohen provides a 'process theology' argument as an explanation of the Holocaust; that is, the Holocaust requires a revision in our understanding of God's nature and action. It forces the theological conclusion that God does not possess the traditional 'omni' predicates; God does not intervene in human affairs in the manner taught by traditional Western theology. However, Cohen's working out of a process theological position in relation to the Holocaust raises as many philosophical problems as it solves.</jats:p>

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