JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

loch, joshua
fense of Judaism against the *blood libel and was praised by
Adolf *Jellinek as the “Hercules of the antisemitic Augean
stables.” Son of a poor baker in Dukla (east Galicia), Bloch
attended yeshivot at Lemberg and Eisenstadt and then the
universities of Munich and Zurich. After officiating in provincial
communities, he became rabbi of the Vienna suburb
of Floridsdorf and a teacher at Jellinek’s bet ha-midrash. During
the *Tisza-Eszlár blood libel trial in 1883, when August
*Rohling undertook to attest on oath that Jews practiced ritual
murder, Bloch attacked him in the press. He challenged
Rohling’s competence as a scholar, accused him of lying, and
offered him 3,000 florins for translating a random page of the
Talmud. Rohling was forced to sue Bloch for libel, but after
two years’ investigations withdrew his action 13 days before
the trial was due to open.
Bloch was elected in 1884, 1885, and 1891 to the Austrian
Parliament from a preponderantly Jewish constituency of Galicia,
and was the first parliamentarian to make Jewish affairs
his main political concern, regarding himself as an interpreter
and defender of Jewish thought to the non-Jewish public. In
1884 he founded a weekly, Dr. Blochs Oesterreichische Wochenschrift,
for combating antisemitism, which existed until after
World War I, and also established the *Oesterreichisch-Israelitische
Union (from 1921: Union deutsch-oesterreichischer
Juden). He also lectured in Social Democratic associations on
social conditions in the time of Jesus. Bloch was guided in his
political activities by Adolf *Fischhof. He developed a previously
unknown militancy and Jewish awareness which brought
him into conflict with other Jewish leaders in Austria. In Der
nationale Zwist und die Juden in Oesterreich (1886) he asked
Jews to remain neutral in the struggle of the various nationalities
within the Hapsburg Empire and to consider themselves
“Austrian Jews” and “Jewish Austrians.” He thus supplied the
ideology for the Hapsburg patriotism with which the majority
of Jews in the realm associated themselves around the beginning
of the 20th century. Bloch saw the struggle for Jewish
rights as part of the fight for the principle of equality for all
nationalities in the empire, which the monarchy would have
to recognize in order to exist. He also initiated proceedings
against further ritual murder accusations by Franz Deckert
and Paulus *Meyer and was active during the *Hilsner case.
At first a supporter of Zionism and Theodor *Herzl,
Bloch published one of Herzl’s articles in 1896 and introduced
him to the finance minister, Bilinski. However, Bloch preferred
the concept of “colonization-Zionism,” regarded Jewish
nationality as closely linked with the Jewish religion, and
refused to close his paper to non-Zionists. Herzl, on the other
hand, failed to appreciate Bloch’s fight against antisemitism.
By around 1900 Bloch had become alienated from the Zionists.
He visited Ereẓ Israel before his death.
For his work in the Jewish cause Bloch was warmly received
on visits to the United States in 1912, and again in
1920. During World War I he raised funds on behalf of the
Austrian government in neutral countries. He published a
compendium of apologetics, Israel und die Voelker (1922; Israel
and the Nations, 1927), based on the evidence of the experts
in connection with the Rohling trial, and his memoirs Erinnerungen
aus meinem Leben (1922; My Reminiscences, 1927).
He also wrote prolifically on Jewish lore.
Bibliography: M. Grunwald, in: Festschrift des juedischtheologischen
Seminars Breslau, 2 (1929), 1–12; L. Kolb, in: Dr. Blochs
Wochenschrift (Nov. 20, 1920), in honor of his 70th birthday; Ch.
Bloch, in: Herzl Yearbook, 1 (1958), 154–64; J. Fraenkel (ed.), Jews of
Austria (1967), index; M. Grunwald, Vienna (1936), 433–57; W.J. Cahnman,
in: YLBI, 4 (1959), 111–39 and passim.
[Meir Lamed]
BLOCH, JOSHUA (1890–1957), U.S. librarian, bibliographer,
and reform rabbi. Born in Dorbian, Lithuania, Bloch went to
the U.S. in 1907. He taught at New York University from 1919
to 1928; from 1922 until his death he served as chaplain in several
hospitals of the New York State Department of Mental
Hygiene. His main work, however, was as head of the Jewish
Division of the New York Public Library, a post which he held
from 1923 to 1956; under his direction the Library developed
as one of the major collections of Judaica in the United States.
Bloch arranged many major exhibitions of Judaica there. Many
of his bibliographical researches into the history of Hebrew
printing were published by the Library, such as Hebrew Printing
in Riva di Trento (1933; Bulletin of the New York Public Library,
vol. 37), Early Hebrew Printing in Spain and Portugal
(1938; ibid., vol. 46). He also founded the quarterly Journal of
Jewish Bibliography in 1938 and was its editor until 1943. In
1940 he was appointed to the publication committee of the
Jewish Publication Society and a year later to the editorial
board of the Jewish Apocryphal Literature Series; as a result
of these connections he wrote On the Apocalyptic in Judaism
(1952) and Of Making Many Books (1953; an annotated list of
the books issued by the Jewish Publication Society, 1890–1952).
The following year he published The People and the Book, on
300 years of Jewish life in America. His bibliography was collected
by Dora Steinglass in A Bibliography of the Writings of
Joshua Bloch (1910–1958) (1960).
Bibliography: A. Berger et al. (eds.), Joshua Bloch Memorial
Volume (1960); idem, in: JBA, 16 (1958/59), 102–4; Shunami,
Bibl, index.
[Abraham Berger]
BLOCH, JULES (1880–1953), French philologist, specialist in
Indic languages. Bloch taught in Paris at the École Pratique
des Hautes Études and the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes.
His work covered the entire range of Indic languages,
ancient, medieval, and – especially – modern. Bloch’s main
research was into the Indo-European languages of India, on
which he wrote La formation de la langue marathe (1915) and
L’Indo-Aryen du Véda aux temps modernes (1934; Indo-Aryan
from the Vedas to Modern Times, 1965). He also published an
important book on Dravidian languages, Structure grammaticale
des langues dravidiennes (1946; The Grammatical Structure
of Dravidian Languages, 1954).
[Herbert H. Paper]
764 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3