KATZ, MOSES

KATZ, MOSES (1885–1960), Yiddish journalist. Born near Minsk, he received a traditional Jewish and secular education. He was arrested in 1903 for participating in an illegal Zionist education group. After the Kishinev pogrom he joined the Socialist-Zionists and took part in self-defense activities. After a two-year stay in Palestine (1908–10), he returned to Russia and then went to the U.S. in 1913. Katz started his career as a writer in Russian in 1904, but from 1905 contributed to Yiddish journals. In the U.S. he joined Chaim *Zhitlowsky's journal Dos Naye Lebn and served as a correspondent for foreign publications in Yiddish and Russian. He returned to Russia in 1917 after the February Revolution. Between 1917 and 1920 Katz held various editorial posts in Russia, helped to found the Ukrainian Kultur-Lige, and managed the Jewish Division of the State Publishing House in Kiev. After his return to America in 1922, he worked on the Yiddish Communist daily Frayhayt (later Morgn Frayhayt) and also contributed to many leftist journals. He wrote numerous articles on travel as well as popular discussions of history and of Marxism, often using pseudonyms. He translated Ivan Franko, Heine, and Kipling into Yiddish and edited a six-volume edition of Lenin in Yiddish (Moscow, 1933). Among his works are Nikolay Lenin (1920), Di Ershte Yidishe Oytonomye ("The First Jewish Autonomy," 1934), and A Dor Vos Hot Farloyrn di Moyre ("A Generation that Lost its Fear," 1956).

bibliography:

lnyl, 4 (1961), 358–62. add. bibliography: P. Novick (ed.), Moyshe Kats Bukh (1963), 9–24; B. Kohen, Leksikon fun Yidish-Shraybers (1986), 311.

[Henry J. Tobias]