Draft:Menachem Katz (scholar)

Menachem Katz (b. 1955) is an Israeli Talmudic scholar, specializing in the fields of the Palestinian Talmud (i.e. the Jerusalem Talmud) and digital humanities, and the editor of digital critical editions of the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds.

Biography

Menachem Katz was born in Bratislava, Slovakia, and immigrated to Israel in 1969. He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the departments of Talmud and Jewish Thought. He received his doctoral degree from Bar-Ilan University, where he wrote his dissertation on the tractate of Kiddushin in the Jerusalem Talmud, under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Sperber. In 2016, Katz published a critical edition of tractate Qiddushin in the Jerusalem Talmud. This was the first published critical edition of a tractate of the Jerusalem Talmud.

Academic career

Katz has held several academic positions, including serving as a lecturer and senior lecturer at Efrata College of Education (where he was head of the Department of Oral Law), and The Open University of Israel. he was also a research fellow at the University of Haifa. Katz founded the Shiluvim Institute at Yeshivat HaKibbutz HaDati. His current operations are held in the Open University Hub for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences.

Contribution to the Field of Digital Humanities

Katz is considered one of the leading experts in the field of digital humanities in Israel, and was the academic director of the Friedberg Genizah Project website, which collects and displays all known manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud. Katz initiated a digital critical edition of the Jerusalem Talmud and oversaw the digitization project as chief editor, with the support of grants from the Israel Science Foundation.

Family

Menachem Katz’s father was Rabbi Eliyahu Katz, Chief Rabbi of Bratislava and later of Beer Sheva, and member of the Chief Rabbinate Council of Israel. His brother is Rabbi Aharon Katz, who served as a judge on the Supreme Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem. Prof. Katz is named after his great-grandfather, Rabbi Menachem Katz-Prostitz, one of the great disciples of the Chatam Sofer.

Selected publications

Edited books

Jerusalem Talmud Tractate Qiddushin: Critical Edition and a Short Explanation, Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi & Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies Press, 2016.

R. Saul Lieberman, Hayerushalmi Kipshuto: A Commentary, Part 1, 3rd ed. [edited by Menachem Katz], 2008.

Selected articles

"Talmud Yerushalmi Digital Critical Edition" (with H. Gershuni, Y.Bar), Proceedings of the 18th Italian Research Conference on Digital Libraries, 2022 (G.M. Di Nunzio et al, eds., http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3160/), http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3160/short8.pdf

"Aleinu – A Prayer Common to Jews and Gentile God-Fearers", Judaism’s Challenge: Election, Divine Love and Human Enmity, ed. Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Academic Studies Press, Boston, 2020, pp. 83-97

Menachem Katz and Hillel Gershuni, Opening Formulas by Scribes in Talmudic Literature, LITERARY SNIPPETS: Colophons Across Space and Time, ed. G. A. Kiraz & S. Schmidtke, Gorgias Press, Piscataway, New Jersey, 2023, pp. 61-78

Menachem Katz and Hillel Gershuni, Opening Formulas by Scribes in Talmudic Literature – a Reader, 2023, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rZ0V_ShBgtDRVv0wpDBOq7nEZ3S5tRFQNG0TjsErRlI/edit?gid=1567114117#gid=1567114117

Reuniting minute fragments", Genizah Fragments, The Newsletter of Cambridge University's Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge University Library, No. 73, April 2017, p. 3.

"Isaac Breuer's Approach to the Study and Instruction of the Babylonian Talmud - in the geographic-cultural context of Central European Jewry". Judaica: Beiträge zum Verstehen des Judentums, 74:4 (2018). pp. 83-92.

"Seven Hanukkot", CoAct International Journal, 2 (2020), pp. 43-53

The Baal Shem Tov and the Boy who Played Flute on Yom Kippur, 2017, http://thegemara.com/the-baal-shem-tov-and-the-boy-who-played-flute-on-yom-kippur/

Five Cups of Wine at the Seder?, 2018, http://thegemara.com/five-cups-of-wine-at-the-seder/

Surviving Manuscripts of the Talmud: An Overview, 2018, http://thegemara.com/surviving-manuscripts-of-the-talmud-an-overview/

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