Steven T. Katz

Steven Theodore Katz (born August 24, 1944) is a Jewish philosopher and scholar. He is the director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University in Massachusetts, United States, where he holds the Alvin J. and Shirley Slater Chair in Jewish and Holocaust Studies.

Katz was born in Jersey City, New Jersey.

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, Harvard and Warwick University. He currently edits the journal Modern Judaism: A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience, published by Oxford University Press.

Katz adopts a "Contextualist" interpretation of mysticism, and has contributed to and edited a number of books dealing with mysticism. He distinguishes two basic approaches to the scientific study and understanding of mysticism: an "essentialist model" and a "contextualist model".

The essentialist model argues that mystical experience is independent of the sociocultural, historical and religious context in which it occurs, and regards all mystical experience in its essence to be the same.

The contextualist model states that mystical experiences are shaped by the concepts "which the mystic brings to, and which shape, his experience". What is being experienced is being determined by the expectations and the conceptual background of the mystic.

Katz has argued that the Holocaust is the only genocide that has occurred in history, and defines "Holocaust" to include only "the travail of European Jewry" and not other victims of the Nazis. He has argued this in depth in The Holocaust in Historical Context; this was released as Volume 1 of three but it is unclear whether the planned second and third volumes have been abandoned.

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