Abraham Katsh, a scholar of Judaica and Hebrew studies who introduced modern Hebrew to American university classrooms, died Tuesday at DeWitt Nursing Home in New York. Mr. Katsh was a relentless researcher who persuaded Soviet authorities to allow him to reproduce thousands of Jewish documents in their custody at the height of the Cold War. His family said he was 92.

Edith Appleton Standen, 93, a renowned tapestry expert and a longtime curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died earlier this month in New York. Her writings, including award-winning catalogs of the Met's European post-medieval tapestries, helped broaden interest in the specialty.

Patsy Southgate, 70, a writer and translator who helped inspire the literary flowering of Paris in the 1950s and later helped establish the writers' colony on eastern Long Island, N.Y.,

becoming a beloved intimate of many leading artists, died July 18 at the Stony Brook University Hospital and Medical Center. Her family said the Springs, N.Y., resident died of a stroke.

Pub Date: 7/27/98