Concert to explore suppression, awakening of Jewish culture in the former Soviet Union

HeraldTimesOnline.com
community news
Feb. 14, 2009
Special to the H-T

Reprinted with permission of The Herald-Times


Performance is in memory of popular Indiana University professor, the late Irving Katz


Cantor Natasha Hirschhorn will perform a concert of Jewish music, “They Call Me: One Woman’s Journey through Russian Jewish Music,” dedicated to the memory of longtime and much-beloved Jewish Studies and History professor Irving Katz.

This concert, sponsored by the Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program, under the auspices of the Dorit and Gerald Paul Program in Jewish Culture and the Arts, will begin at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Grand Hall of the Neal Marshall Black Culture Center, 275 N.Jordan Ave.

It is free and open to the public.

The concert will explore the story of suppression and the then-unprecedented awakening of Jewish culture and identity in the former Soviet Union through the personal experience of Hirschhorn, a Kiev-born musicologist, composer and performer.

Hirschhorn is the music director of Congregation Ansche Chesed in New York City, the synagogue Katz attended after his move from Bloomington to New York City in 2002.

She is a faculty member at the Academy for Jewish Religion and The Jewish Theological Seminary, the author of numerous liturgical and secular compositions, and an accomplished performer and recording artist.

KATZ A ‘LIVING LEGEND’

Katz, who taught at Indiana University for 38 years, passed away Jan. 24, 2008.

One of the most beloved professors in the Department of History and the Jewish Studies Program, the Indiana Daily Student described him as a “living legend” when he retired in 2002. His American Jewish History course and introductory history courses were among the university’s most popular. He received the Student Alumni Association’s Student Choice Award for outstanding teaching in 1991 and 1998.

For 17 years, Katz dined weekly with students in Forest and Briscoe quads, leading them in discussions of politics, current events and culture.

Katz was particularly generous in devoting time to community audiences, presenting numerous lectures on aspects of American Jewish history and on Israel throughout the Midwest. On April 14, 2002, he was awarded the Thomas Hart Benton Mural Medallion for distinguished contributions to IU.