JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Regarded as the reigning theorist of theater and performance
in our time, Blau wrote many books on the subject.
Sails of the Herring Fleet: Essays on Beckett (2000) traces
Blau’s encounters with the work of Samuel Beckett. He directed
Beckett’s plays when they were still virtually unknown,
and for more than four decades remained one of the leading
interpreters of his work. In addition to now-classic essays,
the book includes two interviews – one from Blau’s experience
directing Waiting for Godot at San Quentin prison
and one from his last visit with Beckett, just before the playwright’s
death. Take Up the Bodies: Theater at the Vanishing
Point (1982) and Blooded Thought: Occasions of Theater (1982)
received the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism.
Other books by Blau include The Impossible Theater.
A Manifesto (1964), The Eye of Prey: Subversions of the Postmodern
(1987), The Audience (1990), To All Appearances: Ideology
and Performance (1992), Nothing in Itself: Complexions
of Fashion (1999), and The Dubious Spectacle: Extremities of
Theater, 1976–2000 (2002).
Blau received The Kenyon Review award for literary excellence.
[Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]
BLAU, JOSEPH LEON (1909–1986), U.S. educator and historian
of ideas. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Blau was educated
at Columbia University. He taught at Columbia from
1944, where he later became a professor of religion (1962–77).
In 1966 he became vice president of the Conference on Jewish
Social Studies. Blau followed the philosophic tradition of naturalistic
humanism in the line of John Dewey and his school at
Columbia. He carried on their interest in the history of philosophy
in America in his book Men and Movements in American
Philosophy (1952) and in monographic studies.
As Blau was a student (and, later, collaborator) of Salo
W. *Baron, his approach to Jewish history emphasizes interdisciplinary
and cross-cultural influences. He opposes
the conventional interpretation that the development of the
Jewish religious and philosophical tradition is mainly linear,
maintaining that the Jews were not cut off from cross-cultural
contact for any significant period of their history. He compiled
The Jews of the United States, 1790–1840 (ed. with S.W.
Baron, 1963), and wrote Judaism in America (1976). His book
The Story of Jewish Philosophy (1962) explores the ways in
which Jewish thinkers absorbed and modified the ideas current
in their cultural environment. In Modern Varieties of Judaism
(1966), Blau demonstrates the same principle of interplay
of tradition and environment in the shaping of Jewish
religion since the 18th century. The Christian Interpretation of
the Cabala in the Renaissance (1944) investigates the flow of
ideas in the reverse direction – that is, from Jewish to Christian
thinkers.
Blau also edited the book Essays on Jewish Life and
Thought: Presented in Honor of Salo Wittmeyer Baron (1959).
Add. Bibliography: M. Wohlgelernter, History, Religion,
and American Democracy (1993).
blau, joshua
BLAU, JOSHUA (1919– ), scholar of biblical Hebrew grammar,
Middle Arabic, and *Genizah manuscripts. Born in Cluj,
Transylvania, Blau studied in the Jewish Gymnasium in Budapest
and Baden. He had barely spent a year in Jewish studies
at the Rabbinical Seminary and Semitic languages at the
University of Vienna when he had to flee the country in 1938
after its occupation by the Nazis. He immigrated to Palestine
with his parents, where he continued his academic studies in
Hebrew, Bible, and Arabic at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(M.A., 1942). In 1948 he presented his dissertation on
The Grammar of Judeo-Arabic, but was only awarded a Ph.D.
two years later, after the War of Independence, during which
he served in the army and took part in battles in Jerusalem.
In 1956 he was appointed senior lecturer at Tel Aviv
University and a year later lecturer at the Hebrew University
(professor from 1962), where he taught until his retirement
in 1986.
Blau was a member of the Academy of Hebrew Language
from the 1950s, was its president in 1981–93, and editor of its
journal, Leshonenu, in 1981–99. Blau was also a member of the
Israeli Academy for Sciences and Humanities from 1968 and
head of Humanities, 1989–95; honorary fellow of the Royal
Asiatic Society; and corresponding fellow of the American
Academy for Jewish Research.
Blau’s research focused on the fields of biblical Hebrew
grammar, Semitic languages, and medieval Arabic. His books
Torat ha-Hegeh ve-ha-Ẓurot (“Phonology and Morphology of
Biblical Hebrew,” 1971), Oẓar Leshon ha-Mikra (“A Concordance
and Dictionary of the Bible,” with S.A. Loewenstamm
and M.Z. Kaddari, vol. 1 (1957), 2 (1960), 3 (1968)), Dikduk
ha-Aravit ha-Yehudit shel Yemei ha-Beinayim (“Grammar of
Judeo-Arabic of the Middle-Ages,” 1962, updated 1980) and
others (see below) along with hundreds of articles brought
him the fame as the leading authority on Judeo-Arabic and
a prominent expert on other branches of Semitic languages.
Blau described the rise of Judeo-Arabic in The Emergence and
Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic: A Study of the Origins
of Middle Arabic (1965, 19993), and also published A Grammar
of Christian Arabic (3 vols., 1966–67). In these works Blau provided
a solid foundation for research into medieval Judeo- and
Christian-Arabic. These linguistic types had never been sufficiently
studied or assessed before, because they were outside
the scope of Muslim culture. In his studies, Blau provided a
profound analysis and thorough description of a full-fledged
and unique literature. He also showed the importance of this
layer of Arabic in the crystallization of general standard Arabic
as it has come down to us. Together with Prof. Simon
Hopkins, he discovered an early phonetic method of Judeo-
Arabic spelling, which enables us to reconstruct the very beginnings
of Judeo-Arabic culture. Blau’s research project on
Middle Arabic will be completed with the publication of his
immense Dictionary of Medieval Judeo-Arabic Texts.
Another important achievement of Blau’s consists in
his annotated critical edition of Teshuvot ha-Rambam (“Responsa
of Maimonides”) in three volumes (1958, 1960–61)
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