Dovid Katz
Författare till Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish
Om författaren
Dovid Katz teaches at Vilnius University and is director of research at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute.
Foto taget av: Dovid Katz By Ida Olniansky - Sent to me with permission to use freely with accreditation to Ida Olniansky, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52489718
Verk av Dovid Katz
SEFER HAMITZVOS HAKOTZER 3 exemplar
A Guide to Practical Halacha 1 exemplar
Taggad
Allmänna fakta
- Namn enligt folkbokföringen
- הירשע־דוד כּ״ץ
- Andra namn
- Hirshe-Dovid Kats
- Födelsedag
- 1956
- Kön
- male
- Nationalitet
- USA
- Födelseort
- Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Bostadsorter
- Vilnius, Lithuania
- Utbildning
- Columbia University (B.A.)
University of London (Ph.D., Linguistics) - Yrken
- Yiddish
Director of Research, Vilnius Yiddish Institute (Lithuania)
Professor, Vilnius University (Lithuania) - Relationer
- Katz, Menke (father)
- Priser och utmärkelser
- Guggenheim Fellowship
Medlemmar
Recensioner
Du skulle kanske också gilla
Statistik
- Verk
- 20
- Medlemmar
- 200
- Popularitet
- #110,008
- Betyg
- 3.9
- Recensioner
- 3
- ISBN
- 19
- Språk
- 1
- Favoritmärkt
- 2
Dovid Katz extensively discusses the Ashkenazic trilingualism of the culture - the people's use of various forms of Yiddish, ancient and modern Hebrew, and Aramaic - while also dealing with local languages. Emphasized throughout is "the Lithuanian passion for learning."
The culture lasted and flowered for many hundreds of years, often in much more favorable circumstances than for Jewish cultures in the rest of Europe. Katz discusses the vibrant years between the world wars, until over ninety percent of the Litvaks perished in the Holocaust.
There is a long bibliography to aid a reader's further interest, and there are many maps in color and photos that help the Lithuanian Jewish people - rich or poor, scholarly or illiterate - come alive to the reader. The maps are particularly useful because of the subject of a stateless Jewish culture and the fluidity of national borders and names. For example, in a short span of years a person could live in three differently named cities in three differently named countries, yet never have left home.
Note that "Lithuania" or "Lita" as used in the book refers historically to a much larger area of northern Europe - including parts of what are now Poland, Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine - than the current independent Baltic country of Lithuania. Of the many important cities of the historic Lithuania discussed in the book, probably the most important is Vilnius, the capital of modern Lithuania, and known also as Vilna or Wilno. Before World War II Vilna was often called the Jerusalem of the North or of Lithuania, and the book covers some of the current efforts since the Holocaust to revive that Jewish cultural importance of Lithuania and Vilna in particular.
Note that the book was first published in Vilnius in 2004 with the support of various Lithuanian institutions, and then a reprint edition came out in 2010. The book is in English. Both editions have a large format, about 11 by 9½ inches. The contents of the two editions seem to be the same, but with some minor typesetting changes, and the 2010 edition has a colorful slipcover, which I have not seen on the various copies of the 2004 edition I saw in a bookstore in Vilnius and a university library.
To aid the many virtues of his scholarship, Katz needs a better editor, e.g., one who knows the difference between the words "principle" and "principal." However, some major corrections were made in the 2010 edition, such as on page 195, where a section of the first edition ends with the word "and" and an incomplete thought and sentence. On page 346 the newer edition has the correct Yehuda Pen painting "Get," which replaces an erroneous, unrelated painting.
Errors remain, including some comical ones. For example, at page 205 both editions say, "The Jewish Messiah represents a goal that can be attainted [sic] only in a moral and ethical society, ...," the author or the editor not knowing the important distinction between the words "attaint" and "attain." Also, at page 309 the Jewish bootmaker, revolutionary, and attempted assassin Hirsh Lekert was executed by being shot, but at page 316 he was hanged.… (mer)