BEN-TSIYON
KATS (BENZION KATZ) (December 1870[1]-February 3, 1958)
He was born in Doig (Daugai), Vilna
district, the son of a local rabbi.
Until age eighteen he studied with his father, acquiring a reputation as
the “Doig child prodigy”—at the time of his Bar Mitzvah he was already
proficient in Mishnah. He taught himself
secular subject matter. His writing
career began with a string of essays in Hatsfira
(The siren), in which he came out against the rabbi’s stringencies in Jewish
law vis-à-vis kosher and treyf. Shortly
thereafter, he published a composition on this very matter (Warsaw, 1895). This short work pushed the young author to a
place of honor in the Lithuanian scholarly world. At the time he had already acquired a
considerable degree of knowledge in secular subject matter, but by contrast to
the majority of young lads of his sort, he evinced no signs of heresy, and he
wrote about the Talmud with love and reverence.
In that same year, 1895, he published the booklet: Or noga al sheme hatalmud, bishelosha maamarim (Bright light on the
heavens of the Talmud, in three essays) (Warsaw, 58 pp.), in which he attempted
to explain in a simple but profound manner a series of difficult, entangled
passages in the Talmud. He was at this
time already corresponding with an entire array of brilliant Jews and, to the
invitation from the well-known Orientalist, Baron Horatio Ginzburg, Kats moved
to St. Petersburg and there turned his attention to research on Jewish history. At the recommendation of the famed Professor
Daniel Chwolson, he was accepted as a free auditor at St. Petersburg
University, where he diligently studied in the field of Orientalism and
Semitics for three years’ time. Aside
from Baron Ginzburg and Professor Chwolson, he also at that time came to know
such learned Jews in St. Petersburg as: Dr. Katsenelson (Buki ben Yogli),
Professor Baksht, and Constantine (Kalman-Abba) Shapiro—they all encouraged him
in his research work in the field of Jewish history. In 1898 he published a book in the field of
Russian Jewish history, Lekorot hayehudim
berusiya, polin, velita, bishenot meot hashesh esre vehasheva esreh (Toward
a history of Jews in Russia, Poland, and Lithuania in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries) (Berlin, 64 pp.), which in 1899 was awarded the
then exceedingly prominent Tsaytlin Prize.
In this book he compiled questions-and-answers materials for the history
of Jews in Russia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yet, he was unable to remain solely with
scholarly work for long, as there grew within him the temperament of a fighting
journalist, and in 1903 he founded the newspaper Hazman (The times) in St. Petersburg, which in late 1904 he took to
Vilna where he had been lured by publishers, F. Margolin and Ben-Avigdor, among
others (in St. Petersburg, the newspaper had as a supplement quarterlies in
which he published the first portion of his major work, Lekorot hayehudim berusiya, polin, velita). Also that year he succeeded in gaining from
the authorities permission to bring out a daily newspaper in Yiddish: Di tsayt (The times),[2] which was published by Hazman for several months in 1905-1906. Both newspapers under his editorship had
considerable success. His articles after
the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 were published as well in the foreign press and
aroused the Jewish world. During the
events of revolutionary October in 1905, Kats took a revolutionary line in both
of his newspapers, and when the deputies from the liquidated first state Duma
assembled in Vyborg, Finland, and issued their famed clarion call to resistance
against Tsarism, Kats published the text of their call in Hazman. The authorities then
closed down the newspaper—it soon reappeared under the title Had hazman (Echo of the times)—and the
editor was sentenced to one year in prison which he served at the Grodno Fortress. At the sorrowful, well-known trial of Mendel
Beilis in 1912, he played
a significant role in unmasking the priest Justinas Pranaitis.
With Hazman and later Had hazman, Kats modernized the Hebrew press
at the time. Intellectually close to the
territorialists, he was also a friend of Yiddish and brought into the Hebrew
press a tolerance and respect for Yiddish and for Yiddish literature. WWI broke out while he was in Germany, and
when he returned to Vilna, he described the experiences of his trip in the
daily Der fraynd (The friend), which
F. Margolin was then publishing. In the
spring of 1915, Had hazman ceased
publication and Kats moved to Mexico, where after the March Revolution of 1917
he published the Hebrew weekly Haam
(The people). In 1920 he was an expert
on behalf of Lithuania in concluding the Soviet-Lithuanian peace, and he then
departed for Kovno and in his official position, which he held onto for a fair
period of time, he helped Jewish writers escape from Soviet Russia.
In 1922 Kats settled in Berlin and
from there began intensive journalistic and literary activity in Yiddish. He contributed pieces to: Morgn-zhurnal (Morning journal) in New
York; Haynt (Today) in Warsaw; Di tsayt in London; Dos folk (The people) in Riga; and Idishe tsaytung (Jewish newspaper) in Buenos Aires. Aside from journalistic articles, Kats also published
serially in Morgn-zhurnal a string of
important essays, such as: “Idishe firer fun mendelson un vilner goen biz der
letster tsayt” (Jewish leaders from Mendelssohn and the Vilna Gaon until recent
times), a series of articles on significant political leaders in Russia until
the Revolution, articles on history in recent years, and the like. Knowledgeable about the Soviet regime, Kats
in his journalistic pieces between the two world wars became highly concerned
about Jewish and general matters in the Soviet Union. In 1931 he left for the land of Israel, where
he was received as a veteran of the Hebrew press in Tsarist Russia and as a
respectable Jewish scholar and modern journalist. In Tel Aviv he contributed for a time to Haarets (The land), later going on to
establish and edit Haboker (This morning). He also continued contributing to the Yiddish
press in all Jewish communities. In his later
years he published his memoirs in all the major Jewish newspapers—a mixture of
historical documentation and depictions of a way of life. He also edited Haavar (The past), a quarterly periodical for research in Jewish
history of recent times. He published in
Hebrew: Manhigim yehudiyim metekufat
mendelson vehagaon mivilna vead yemenu ela (Jewish leaders from the age of
Mendelssohn and the Gaon of Vilna until our own times) and Divre yeme hayehudim bizman aleksander hashlishi venikolai hasheni
(Jewish history in the era of Alexander III and Nikolai II). In 1947 his historical work Perushim,
tsedokim, kanaim, notsrim, shita ḥadasha beḥeker divre yeme yisrael
(Pharisees, Sadducees, Zeolots, and Christians: A new method for the study of
the history of Israel) (Tel Aviv, 414 pp.) was published—in it he argued
against the position held by general historiography regarding that era that was
linked to the rise of Christianity. He
remained as dynamic and temperamental as always until his final days. He was interested in everything and everyone,
and he reacted to every event of the time.
In 1947, when the U.N. had to decide on the fate of the land of Israel,
he published a pamphlet, in which he insisted on the historical rights that Arabs,
too, had in Israel, and—as he himself was later to write in 1956—the pamphlet: “is
being widely disseminated in the land, but I cannot say that it will fulfill its
objective.” He died in Tel Aviv. After his death the publishing house of Devir
(Tel Aviv) published the second volume: Rabanut,
ḥasidut, haskala, letoldot hatarbut hayisraelit misof hamea ha-16 ad
reshit hamea ha-19 (Rabbinate,
Hassidism, Enlightenment, history of Israeli culture, from the end of the
sixteenth century until the early nineteenth century) (1956-1958), 2 vols. Later still: Al itonim veanshim (On newspapers and people) (Tel Aviv, 1983), 170
pp.
Sources:
Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2;
Avrom Reyzen, Epizodn fun mayn lebn
(Episodes from my life), vol. 1 (New York, 1951), pp. 1075-76; Dr. Joseph
Klausner, Darkhe likerat ha-tehiya vehageula,
autobiyografya, 1874-1944 (Roads toward revival and redemption, an
autobiography, 1874-1944), pp. 100, 146, 156, 325; Meylekh Ravitsh, Mayn leksikon (My lexicon), vol. 3 (Montreal,
1958), p. 478; Y. D. Berkovitsh, in Forverts
(New York) (February 15, 191931; March 1, 1931; January 22, 1933); A. Yoel, in Hadoar (New York) (Tevet 1 [= December
16], 1955); D. Eynhorn, in Forverts
(October 14, 1956; October 28, 1956); M. Osherovitsh, in Forverts (February 8, 1958); Haavar
(Tel Aviv) (Elul [August-September] 1958); Ḥ. Orlan, in Hadoar
(February 20, 1959); Dr. Shloyme Bikl, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal
(New York) (December 6, 1959); Y. Kahan, Unter di sovetishe himlen (Under Soviet skies) (Tel Aviv, 1961),
pp. 164, 165.
Borekh Tshubinski
[Additional
information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon
fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New
York, 1986), col. 310.]
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