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of sex and a leader in the movement for sexual reform. His
scientific publications include Die Praxis der Hautkrankheiten
(“The Practice of Skin Diseases,” 1908) and Ursprung der Syphilis
(“Origin of Syphilis,” 1911). In the latter he suggests that
the disease was introduced to Europe through the Spaniards
after the discovery of South America. Bloch made important
contributions to the history of medicine which were published
in the monumental History of Medicine of Max Neuburger. He
also wrote on the history of dermatology and of Indian and
Byzantine medicine. Many of his works were written under the
pseudonyms of “von Welsenburg” and “Eugen Dühren.”
Bibliography: S.R. Kagan, Jewish Medicine (1952), 427.
[Suessmann Muntner]
BLOCH, JEAN-RICHARD (1884–1947), French author and
political journalist. Bloch was born into an assimilated family
in Paris. His Jewish consciousness was stirred in his boyhood
by the antisemitism engendered by the Dreyfus Affair,
and Jewish themes came to play a significant part in his writing.
He was educated at the Sorbonne and became a teacher
of history and literature. One of his earliest books was Lévy
(1912), in which one of the stories deals with the effects of the
Dreyfus case on a Jewish family in a provincial town. His most
powerful novel,… et compagnie, (1918;… & Co., 1929), is the
story of Jewish cloth merchants from Alsace who move their
business to a small town in western France. This work portrays
the conflicts facing the Jew who wishes to maintain his
identity while integrating into French culture. In 1910 Bloch
founded a literary review, L’effort libre, but his work was interrupted
by World War I, in which he was wounded three
times. During the 1920s and early 1930s he wrote many novels,
short stories, plays, poems, and essays. Two of the novels,
La nuit kurde (1925; A Night in Kurdistan, 1930) and Sybilla
(1932), reflect his fascination with the East. In 1925 he visited
Palestine for the inauguration of the Hebrew University, and
thereafter wrote a number of articles on the future role of the
Jewish people, notably “Quel service les Juifs peuvent-ils rendre
au monde?” (in Palestine, 1 (1927), 97–102). An essay entitled
“Destin du siècle” (1931) showed that his approach to the
Jewish problem had become somewhat ambiguous. From his
student days, Bloch had been a socialist, and from the mid-
1930s his interests centered mainly in politics. He had joined
the Communist Party in 1921 and in 1923 helped to found the
communist-oriented literary magazine Europe and in 1937,
together with the poet Louis Aragon, the Communist daily
Ce Soir. When the Germans occupied France in 1940 Bloch
became an active member of the underground and in 1941 escaped
the Gestapo by fleeing to Moscow, where he engaged
in resistance broadcasts to the French people. He returned to
France in 1945. Jean-Richard Bloch was a brother-in-law of
André *Maurois.
Bibliography: J.R. Bloch and R. Rolland, Deux hommes se
recontrent (1964); Europe (Fr., June 1966).
[Denise R. Goitein]
bloch, joseph samuel
BLOCH, JOSEPH (1871–1936), German socialist and journalist.
Born in Lithuania, he immigrated to Germany where
he edited the Sozialistische Monatshefte, a monthly publication
which attracted a team of outstanding writers. Bloch advocated
a union of Continental Europe and when the Bolsheviks
came to power in Russia, he proposed a Franco-German
Union. After the German revolution of 1918, he advocated a
system of German democracy based on workers’ councils.
The Monatshefte gave considerable attention to Jewish questions
and supported the Zionist movement. Bloch favored
mass immigration to Palestine and was highly critical of British
policy there. One of the first victims of Nazi persecution
in Germany, he never wavered in his belief in the triumph of
socialism and the future of the Zionist enterprise. He died a
lonely refugee in Prague.
Bibliography: K. Blumenfeld, Erlebte Judenfrage (1962), 57,
123. Add. Bibliography: C. Bloch, “Der Kampf Joseph Blochs und
der ‘Sozialistische Monatshefte’ in der Weimarer Republik,” in: Jahrbuch
des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte, 3 (1974), 257–88.
BLOCH, JOSEPH LEIB (1860–1930), Lithuanian yeshivah
head. He showed exceptional ability from childhood and at
the age of 14 he traveled to Chelm where he studied under R.
Eliezer *Gordon. He continued his studies with Naphtali Ẓevi
Judah *Berlin at Volozhin. After his marriage to the daughter
of Eliezer Gordon, he moved to Telz, where he assisted his father-in-law,
who had been appointed rabbi and rosh yeshivah.
In 1902, after resigning from the yeshivah in protest against the
resistance of a number of the students to the study of musar,
he was appointed rabbi of Varna, a small village near Telz. He
served later as rabbi of Shadova, where he established his own
yeshivah. In 1910 Bloch was appointed rabbi of Telz and rosh
yeshivah, succeeding his father-in-law. Under his leadership,
the yeshivah attracted large numbers of students. In addition
to his lectures on halakhah, Bloch also gave talks on musar.
He took the unusual step of founding a teachers’ seminary,
which produced hundreds of educators, and a preparatory
school, in which secular studies were taught. Thanks to these
auxiliary institutions, the yeshivah of Telz occupied a central
position, with an enrollment, at times, of as many as 500 students.
Active in communal affairs, Bloch served as a member
of the executive of the Association of Lithuanian Rabbis and
as one of the leaders of *Agudat Israel. Prominent among his
sons were Abraham Isaac, who succeeded his father in Telz,
and Elijah Meir, who was one of the yeshivah principals. His
other sons and sons-in-law also taught in Telz. Bloch’s ethical
essays were published in Shi’urei Da’at (pt. 1, 1949; pt. 2, 1953;
pt. 3, 1956). His halakhic lectures appeared in Shi’ur Halakhah
(pt. 1, 1932; pt. 2, 1943; pt. 3, 1958).
Bibliography: D. Katz, Tenu’at ha-Musar, 5 (1962/63),
17–109.
[Itzhak Alfassi]
BLOCH, JOSEPH SAMUEL (1850–1923), rabbi, publicist,
and politician in Austria. He acquired distinction for his de-
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