JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

liokh, ivan stanislavovich
be readily explained by the fact that these three affections are
all genetically determined, generally by recessive or by polygenic
inheritance. Although there is no such thing as a Jewish
gene pool, it is true that inbred groups – Quakers no less than
Jews and royal families no less than village communities –
have many features and genes in common. These are readily
perpetuated under the prevailing conditions: a recessive mutant
gene is much more likely to spread in a closed community
than elsewhere. (The gene for Tay-Sachs disease probably
originated as such a mutant in a Jewish family in White Russia
during the last century, and by emigration, carriers have
spread it into the Jewish communities of Great Britain and
the United States.) Contrary to early beliefs, the affection is
not exclusively Jewish, for it is seen in other ethnic groups as
well. These occasional cases do not add substantially to the instances
of hereditary blindness in Jews, and it is a moot point
whether the greater incidence of blindness from high myopia
and diabetic retinopathy in Western Jews adds to that load.
The numbers involved would be relatively slight, and compensating
deficiencies in other hereditary causes are theoretically
possible; actual data are lacking, however.
See section on Braille in *Alphabet, Hebrew.
[Arnold Sorsby]
Bibliography: Gordon, in: Archives of Ophthalmology, 9
(1933), 751ff.; E.A. Speiser, Genesis (1964), 139 (on Gen. 19:11); idem, in:
JCS, 6 (1952), 81ff. (esp., 89 n. 52); Harrison, in: IDB, 1 (1962), 448–9;
M.Z. Segal, Sifrei Shemu’el (1964), 260, 262 (on II Sam. 5:6, 8); Weinfeld,
in: Biblica, 46 (1965), 420–1; Paul, in: JAOS, 88 (1968), 182; H.J.
Zimmels, Magicians,Theologians and Doctors (1952), 461 notes; S. Assaf,
Ha-Onshin Aḥarei Ḥatimat ha-Talmud (1922), 97 98, 135.
BLIOKH (Bloch), IVAN STANISLAVOVICH (1836–1901),
Russian financier, writer, and pacifist. Born in Radom, Poland,
Bliokh studied in Warsaw and Berlin. In Warsaw, he engaged
in banking, a field he developed extensively in St. Petersburg.
He also played a leading role in the construction of the Russian
railroads and put their operation on a sound management
basis. Bliokh won international fame through his dedication
to pacifism, which is the theme of his six-volume publication
Budushchaya voyna v tekhnicheskom, ekonomicheskom i
politicheskom otnosheniyakh (1898; last vol. translated as The
Future of War… Is War Now Impossible?, 1899). He attempted
to prove that wars were of no value to a nation because of the
massive expenditures involved and the consequent damage to
national economies, apart from the human cost. This book, as
well as Bliokh’s personal endeavors, were among the factors
which influenced Czar Nicholas II to convene the 1899 Hague
Peace Conference in order to consider the limitation of armaments
and the arbitration of international disputes.
Although Bliokh converted to Calvinism, he maintained
his interest in the Jewish question and in improving the lot
of Russian Jewry. After the pogroms of the 1890s, he fought
strenuously in defense of the Jews and pressed the government
to end discrimination. In a five-volume work, Sravneniye
materialnago i nravstvennago blagosostayaniya guberniy
zapadnykh, velikorossiyskikh i polskikh (“A Comparison of the
Material and Moral Welfare of the Western, Great Russian,
and Polish Provinces,” 1901), the preparation of which, with
the help of many outstanding experts, cost him hundreds of
thousands of rubles, he analyzed the economic condition of
the Jews in Russia and emphasized their great contribution to
the economy. This work constituted a brilliant defense against
the government’s anti-Jewish arguments, but was confiscated
and burned after publication. Fortunately, a number of copies
were by chance saved from the censors, and eventually its contents
became widely known through a summary by A.P. Subbotin
entitled Yevreyskiy vopros v yego pravilnom osveshchenii
(“The Jewish Question in its Right Light,” 1903).
In 1897 Bliokh became involved in the work of the *Jewish
Colonization Association (ICA) in Russia and supported
it generously. He showed an interest in Zionism and became
a friend of Theodor *Herzl, whom he had met in 1899 at the
Hague Peace Conference. (Herzl had come to ask the Russian
delegates to help him to obtain an audience with the czar. With
Bliokh’s assistance Herzl met the head of the Russian delegation,
de Staal, and other statesmen.) At Herzl’s request, in July
1899 Bliokh tried to persuade the Russian authorities to revoke
the decree prohibiting the sale of *Jewish Colonial Trust
shares. Shortly before his death, Bliokh established the International
Museum of War and Peace in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Bibliography: N. Sokolow, in: JC (Jan. 24, 1902), 11.
[Nathan Feinberg]
BLIS, DAVID (1870–1942), Cuban communal leader. David
Blizhnianski-Halpern was born in Grodno and studied in a
yeshivah in Volozhin. He continued his studies in the Rabbinical
Seminary in Breslau and the Hebrew Union College
in Cincinnati. He joined his parents, who settled in *Moisesville
(Argentina), but he continued his travels, being more
interested in business than in agriculture. He lived in Mexico
for a few years and participated in the foundation of the first
Jewish organization there, Alianza Monte Sinai (1912). He apprently
lent money to President Francisco Madero and fled
from Mexico following his assassination, reaching Cuba in
1913. Blis took an active part in the foundation of almost all the
early Jewish organizations of Cuba and was later nicknamed
“the grandfather of the Jewish community.” He founded the
Young Men’s Hebrew Association (1916), a common social
framework for Americans and Sephardim in Cuba. From the
early 1920s he took an active part in assisting immigrants from
Eastern Europe, and was co-founder (1924) and president of
the Centro Hebreo, and the president of the Centro Israelita,
which developed from it. From 1933 to 1934 he was president
of the Comisión Jurídica, which protected the Jewish community
during the political upheavals of that period.
Blis was an ardent Zionist and promoted the early Zionist
activities of the Sephardi Jews. As one of the most prominent
members of the Unión Sionista he was named honorary president
in 1937. On Blis’s initiative the Cuban Senate approved
unanimously in 1919 a resolution supporting the efforts of the
756 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3