JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

lau, amram
words of the Assyrian warlord *Rab-Shakeh (Sanh. 60a). It is
codified in Shulḥan Arukh (YD 340:37) that whoever bears a
blasphemy whether with the Tetragrammaton or with attributes,
in any language and from a Jew, even from the mouth
of a witness, must rend his garment. The second and any successive
witnesses only testified: “I have heard the same words”
(Sanh. 7:5); according to the opinion of *Abba Saul, whoever
utters the Tetragrammaton in public is excluded from the
world to come (Av. Zar. 18a). Besides the sacrilege of God, vituperation
against the king, God’s anointed servant, was also
considered blasphemy (cf. Ex. 22:27 and I Kings 21:10). Gentiles,
too, are obliged to refrain from blasphemy since this is
one of the Seven *Noachide Laws (Sanh. 56a, 60a). Maimonides
also classified as blasphemy the erasure of God’s name
written on paper or engraved on stone, etc., which was to be
punished by flogging (Yad, Yesodei ha-Torah 6:1–6). After
Jewish courts were deprived of jurisdiction in those cases
where capital punishment was applied, excommunication
(see *ḥerem) was the usual sanction against a blasphemer (J.
Mueller (ed.), Teshuvot Ge’onei Mizraḥ u-Ma’arav (1898), 27a,
responsum no. 103 by Amram Gaon).
Bibliography: Eisenstein, Dinim, 68.
BLAU, AMRAM (1894–1974), rabbi, leader of the ultra-Orthodox
sect *Neturei Karta. Blau was born in Jerusalem into a
noted religious family. He was a leading member of the Agudat
Israel youth movement in the early 1930s. Blau and some
of his colleagues left the movement in 1935 and founded the
extreme anti-Zionist Ḥevrat Ḥayyim, later to become Neturei
Karta. His fierce opposition to Zionism and Agudat Israel,
sometimes expressed violently, led on several occasions to his
prosecution and imprisonment. His anti-Zionist attitude did
not change with the establishment of the State of Israel (1948),
which he refused to recognize. Blau and his followers rejected
the State of Israel on so-called “halakhic” grounds, rejecting
a state run by secular Jews. In addition, Blau continually denounced
the establishment of a Jewish state before the coming
of the Messiah as an act of infamy and blasphemy. In 1965,
after the death of his first wife, he married a proselyte, Ruth
Ben-David, despite the opposition of the ultra-Orthodox bet
din and some of his followers.
[Menachem Friedman / David Derovan (2nd ed.)]
BLAU, BRUNO (1881–1954), German lawyer and sociologist.
Born in West Prussia, Blau practiced law in Berlin. In 1908
he joined A. *Ruppin as editor, and from 1909 was the sole
editor, of the Zeitschrift fuer Demographie und Statistik der
Juden (1904–19; new series 1924–27), published by the Buero
fuer Statistik der Juden, of which Blau became director after
Ruppin left for Palestine in 1907. Because of his severe illness,
the Nazis did not deport him during World War II but kept
him confined in the police section of the Berlin Jewish Hospital.
Blau immigrated to the United States after the war, but
returned to Germany before his death. Among Blau’s many
published works are Kriminalitaet der deutschen Juden (1906)
and Das Ende der Juden in Deutschland (1950; Last Days of
German Jewry, 1953). He also edited the anthology Statistik
der Juden (1918). Of particular importance is his work on anti-
Jewish Nazi legislation and administrative orders, Ausnahmerecht
fuer die Juden in den europaeischen Laendern (vol. 1,
1952), which is a collection of documents from Germany and
was reprinted as Ausnahmerecht fuer die Juden in Deutschland,
1933–1945 (1954).
BLAU, FRITZ (1865–1929), Austrian chemist. From 1890
he taught at Vienna University. In 1902 he joined the Auregesellschaft
in Berlin, and from 1919 was head of research of
the Osram Company in Berlin, at that time one of the foremost
industrial firms in Germany. He took out 185 patents,
some in organic chemistry, but most dealing with tungsten,
incandescent electric lamps, gases, and radiation. This work
led to other patented developments in wireless telegraphy,
electric furnaces, and X-ray machines and techniques. In addition,
Blau published many papers in scientific journals on
these subjects.
Bibliography: Zeitschrift fuer technische Physik, 6 (1925),
278–359.
[Samuel Aaron Miller]
BLAU, HERBERT (1926– ), U.S. theater director and educator.
Born in New York, Blau received a bachelor’s degree in
chemical engineering from New York University (1947), an
M.A. in drama from Stanford University (1949), and a Ph.D.
in English and American literature from Stanford (1954). He
formed the Actor’s Workshop in San Francisco with Jules *Irving,
in 1952. One of Blau’s innovative acts was to present a
play to the inmates of San Quentin penitentiary. On November
19, 1957, a group of actors faced an audience of 1,400 convicts.
No live play had been performed at San Quentin since Sarah
Bernhardt had appeared there in 1913. Now, 45 years later,
the play that had been chosen, largely because no women appeared
in it, was Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. It was an
unequivocal success. Overall, this repertory theater was highly
successful but failed financially, and closed in 1965. Blau and
Irving then directed the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater,
New York, but Blau resigned in 1968. His last extended work
in the theater was as artistic director of the experimental group
KRAKEN (1968–81). Blau served as its first provost as well as
dean of the School of Theater. A radical departure from the
already innovative theater that Blau had been associated with,
the work of KRAKEN included some of the first productions
in the U.S. of such controversial dramatists of the modernist
period as Brecht, Beckett, *Pinter, Ionesco, Whiting, Arden,
Duerrenmatt, Frisch, and Genet.
Blau was distinguished professor of English and Modern
Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, where
he was also a senior fellow at the Center for 20th Century
Studies. Subsequently he was the Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood
Professor in the Humanities at the University of Washington.
742 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3