JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

loch, martin
BLOCH, MARTIN (1883–1954), German expressionist
painter, who became a master of British landscape. Bloch
lived in Spain during World War I and subsequently spent
many summers painting in Italy. In these years he was influenced
by Cézanne, the “fauves,” and the German expressionists.
When Hitler came to power he fled to England, where he
was interned during World War II. During his internment he
restricted himself to black and white studies in contM crayons
heightened with red chalk. His mature style emerged with
a period of painting in Dorset in 1947. He developed a deep
love of the British landscape, retaining a German expressionist
sense of the dramatic but abandoning the tendency to exaggerate.
His developed sense of color became subtle and harmonious.
A posthumous exhibition held in 1955 established
his reputation.
add Bibliography: D.F. Jenkins (ed.), Y bryniau tywyll y
cymclau trymion (“The Darks Hills, the Heavy Clouds: An Expression
of Landscape Painting,” 1981); C. da Costa, Martin Bloch, 1883–
1954: An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings (South London Art
Gallery, 1984).
[Sonja Beyer (2nd ed.)]
BLOCH, MATTATHIAS BEN BENJAMIN ZE’EV (Wolf)
ASHKENAZI (1610/1620–after 1668), preacher and one of
the leaders of the Shabbatean movement. Bloch was born
in Cracow. His grandfather, Feivel Bloch, was one of the
leaders of the community during the first half of the 17th century
and its representative at the meetings of the Council
of Four Lands in Poland. He studied under the Cracow rabbis
Menahem Mendel *Krochmal and Abraham Joshua *Heschel.
He suffered during the persecution of the Jews under *Chmielnicki
and during the Swedish occupation (1648–57) and
was expelled from his town. In 1660 he was in Jassy and
in 1665, on his way to Ereẓ Israel, was in Constantinople,
where he published Kelal Katan, a homily on Deuteronomy 32.
He relates that he had two important homiletical books in
his possession: Sefer Kelal Gadol, written in the peshat (“literal”),
remez (“symbolic”), and derash (“homiletic-allegoric”)
styles; and the second, Sefer Mattityahu, a kabbalistic commentary
on all sections of the Torah. Apparently Bloch became
a Shabbatean in 1665 either while he was still in Constantinople
or when he arrived in Jerusalem and met Shabbetai
Ẓevi before the latter had left Ereẓ Israel. When, at the end
of 1665 in Smyrna, Shabbetai Ẓevi appointed kings in a similar
order to that of the ancient kings of Israel and Judah, he
appointed Bloch “King Asa.” In 1666 Bloch was among the
leaders of the Shabbatean movement in Egypt. With the failure
of the messianic hopes after Shabbetai Ẓevi’s apostasy,
he persisted in his belief, but he left Egypt to settle in Mosul
(Iraq) where he was accepted as a rabbi or dayyan. His influence
spread to the communities in Kurdistan, which he
encouraged in their Shabbatean belief. His activities as rabbi
of the community as well as a Shabbatean leader are recorded
in various letters preserved from 1668. After that year
nothing is known about him. According to Jacob *Saspor-
tas, Bloch was already elderly at the start of the Shabbatean
movement.
Bibliography: G. Scholem, in: Zion, 7 (1942), 175–8,
193–5; Scholem, Shabbetai Ẓevi, index; A. Yaari, in: KS, 36 (1960/61),
525–34.
[Gershom Scholem]
BLOCH, SIR MAURICE (1883–1964), Scottish distiller and
philanthropist. Born in Dundee, Bloch settled in Glasgow in
1910. He founded a family distilling business and at the same
time played an active role in Jewish communal work. In 1937
he was knighted “for political and social services.” In 1954 he
gave up his large business to devote himself to civic and Jewish
communal affairs. He was president of the Board of Guardians,
he represented Scotland on the Chief Rabbinate Council
and became chairman of the Queen’s Park Synagogue. He
was keenly interested in Jewish education and was president
of the Glasgow yeshivah, made a generous donation in 1956 to
Jews’ College, London, and set up a trust fund for the Hebrew
University. He also gave sizable gifts to Glasgow University
and Royal Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow. In
1948 Bloch was involved in the investigations of the Lynskey
Tribunal into the conduct of some ministers of the crown.
Throughout Bloch denied corruption though admitting to indiscretions.
Nevertheless at the end of the trial his name was
removed from the list of magistrates in Glasgow where he had
been a justice of the peace for 25 years.
BLOCH, MOSES (1815–1909), rabbi and author. Bloch, who
was born in Ronsperg, Bohemia, served as rabbi in several
cities of Bohemia and Moravia. In 1877 he was appointed together
with David *Kaufmann and Wilhelm *Bacher to the
academic staff of the newly founded rabbinical seminary in
Budapest. Bloch was professor of Talmud and Codes and also
the rector of the seminary, in which capacities he served for
30 years. His main work was Sha’arei Torat ha-Takkanot (in
7 volumes, 1879–1906) which traces, on the basis of talmudic
sources, the development of *takkanot from Moses to the end
of the talmudic period. In a sequel to this work, Sha’arei ha-
Ma’alot (1908), Bloch gives a detailed exposition of the various
states and degrees of holiness, ritual and family purity as
defined in the Mishnah and Talmud. Bloch published important
monographs, in German and Hungarian, on biblical and
talmudic law, in the yearbooks of the Budapest Seminary. He
published the Prague 1608 edition of the responsa of *Meir b.
Baruch of Rothenburg, together with notes and indexes (in
1885; 18963), and also some hitherto unpublished responsa of
R. Meir for the Mekize Nirdamim (1891).
Bibliography: Sefer ha-Yovel… Moshe Aryeh Bloch (1905),
ix–xxiv; Jahresbericht der Landes-Rabbinerschule in Budapest, 31
(1908), 3–4; 32 (1909), iii–x.
[Moshe Nahum Zobel]
BLOCH, MOSES RUDOLPH (1902–1985), physical chemist.
Born in Czechoslovakia, Bloch studied chemistry at the Uni-
766 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3