Professor Dovid Katz

Website: www.dovidkatz.net

Residence : Vilnius, Lithuania (academic year) and North Wales, Great Britain (school recesses)

Biographical information

Born in Brooklyn NY, 1956. Led a student protest against the exclusion of Yiddish at his Hebrew day school and went on to become the first undergraduate major in Yiddish studies at Columbia University. Settled in England in 1978 to write his doctorate on the origins of the Yiddish language (University of London, 1982). Founded Yiddish studies at Oxford University where he taught for 18 years and built a world-class center for Yiddish Studies. Visiting Professor at Yale University (1998-1999). Since 1999, professor of Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture at Vilnius University, Lithuania. Since 1990 leading expeditions to discover and record the last Holocaust survivors in Eastern Europe. Winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2001-2002). Author of a hundred papers on the history of Yiddish, 7 academic volumes plus 3 volumes of original fiction in Yiddish. Most recent works: Lithuanian Jewish Culture (400 pp folio) and Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish (436 pp), both 2004. Words on Fire included in the Chicago Tribune's list of the year's 10 best books on language.

Discussion topics

• The Story of Yiddish-The suspenseful thousand-year saga of the Yiddish language from its origins to the present and future. Interactions with Hebrew and Aramaic. Yiddish and women. Yiddish and Kabbalah. The phenomena of love and hate of the language and its role in Jewish society. Religious and secular traditions. Yiddish vis-à-vis Zionism, Yiddishism, Israel, the Holocaust and the future of world Jewry. The status of the language today (and the various controversies surrounding it). Prospects for the future.
• The Last Holocaust Survivors in Eastern Europe [with never before shown video clips]-The Jews who have decided to stay in their ancestral homeland in Eastern Europe. Who are they? Why do they stay? Their Jewish identity and culture. Religious, secular and political traditions. Their views of American (and world Jewry), Israel, the Holocaust and east-west relations. Their heartbreaking poverty and the failure of the Germans (or anyone) to compensate them. Shtetl and city types. Last of the Mohicans and what we can all learn from them, and how we can help them.
• The Shtetl [with never before shown video clips]- From Fiddler on the Roof to the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the East European Jewish shtetl is a source of romanticism, nostalgia and mystique. Some academics claim it never existed. After a decade and a half of expeditions to discover and record the last shtetl Jews, an American-born Yiddish scholar comes to grips with the shtetl. Its existence, definition, and characteristics in Jewish and general history, and in terms of immediate family background of millions of Jews today. Survival of aspects of shtetl culture into the future.
• The Litvaks [with never before shown video clips]- The Litvaks ("Lithuanian Jews") are Jews whose family background is to be found on a territory that now includes Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, and the adjacent areas of Poland, Russia and Ukraine. Litvaks have a seven century history that is rich in learning, research, and culture. Heritage of the hasidic-misnagdic conflict. The image of the Litvak as educated and clever but lacking in humor and warmth; origins of the folklore. Vilna as the world center of Talmudic culture for centuries. Contributions to traditional and modernist Jewish culture and to the outside world. The new incarnations of Litvak culture today. Clips of the last Litvaks in the "old country."
• Advanced Yiddish- While on lecture tours, Professor Katz is sometimes able to lead intensive short courses in Yiddish for adults (intermediate and advanced levels only).

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