Eli Katz, a noted Yiddish scholar, translator and professor whose refusal to answer questions about his political affiliations and beliefs led to his dismissal from the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964 and ignited a fight over academic freedom, died July 22 at a Berkeley Hospital. He was 77.

The Brooklyn-born son of Jewish immigrant union activists, Katz was an acting assistant professor of German at UC Berkeley in 1963-64 when his departmental colleagues recommended him for a permanent appointment.

Chancellor Edward W. Strong, however, declined to renew Katz’s contract because he refused to say whether he was a member of the Communist Party.

In 1959, Katz reportedly had been identified by the House Committee on Un-American Activities as having been a member of the Communist Party two years earlier. Appearing before the committee, Katz invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked if he had attended two party meetings in 1957.

Katz, who taught at Western Reserve University in Cleveland after leaving Berkeley, returned to UC Berkeley in 1966 after the Berkeley Academic Senate voted to reverse Strong’s decision and the new chancellor, Roger W. Heyns, reviewed the case.

Katz served as an assistant professor at UC Berkeley until 1970. He then joined the faculty at Sonoma State University and retired as a full professor in 1992.

His principal works are a scholarly edition of “The Book of Fables: the Yiddish Fable Collection of Reb Moshe Wallich” and a translation of stories from the late 19th and early 20th century by Yiddish writer I.L. Peretz.

Until suffering a debilitating stroke in 2005, his family said, Katz taught popular and highly regarded Yiddish classes at UC Berkeley, the Lehrhaus Judaica in Berkeley, and other institutions devoted to Yiddish language and literature.