The value of the particular - Steven T Katz

In this tribute to Steven T. Katz on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Michael Zank and Ingrid Anderson present sixteen original essays written by senior and junior scholars in comparative religion, philosophy of religion, modern Judaism, and theology after the Holocaust, fields of inquiry where Steven Katz made major contributions over the course of his distinguished scholarly career.

The authors of this volume, specialists in Jewish history, especially the modern experience, and Jewish thought from the Bible to Buber, offer theoretical and practical observations on the value of the particular. Contributions range from Tim Knepper's reevaluation of the ineffability discourse to the particulars of the Settlement Cookbook, examined by Nora Rubel as an American classic.

Michael Zank, Ph.D. (1994), Brandeis University, is Professor of Religion at Boston University where he also serves as the director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies.

Ingrid Anderson, Ph.D. (2014), Boston University, is a Lecturer in the College of Arts and Sciences and an affiliate of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at that University.

The Value of the Particular provides proper testimony to the career and influence of its honoree. The articles are of uniformly high quality and the authors of these essays freely dialogue with Katz and his scholarship in their own writings, thereby bearing direct witness to the impact his career has had upon modern scholarship in these diverse yet overlapping fields. The editors are to be congratulated for their superb work and we can all hope that Professor Katz continues his scholarly productivity for years to come. -David Ellenson, Brandeis University and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, RRJ 20 (2017) 279-297.