JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

wife, Annette, wrote three books about fighting cancer. Their
cancer foundation oversees annual rallies each year on the
first Sunday in June to raise awareness that death and cancer
are not synonymous. At the first rally, in 1990, they dedicated
a park to Americans who have been diagnosed with cancer.
Since then the Blochs have completed 19 additional cancer
survivor parks. Richard Bloch also served a six-year term on
the National Cancer Advisory Board.
[Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)]
BLOCK, HERBERT LAWRENCE (Herblock; 1909–2001),
U.S. editorial cartoonist. Born in Chicago, Block started to
draw when he was quite young and won a scholarship to the
Chicago Art Institute at 12. His critical eye and rapier pen
made him one of the leading journalists of his time. In 1929
Block dropped out of Lake Forest College after two years to
work for The Chicago Daily News. His cartoons were syndicated
almost from the start. In 1933 he joined the Newspaper
Enterprise Association, where he won his first Pulitzer Prize
in 1942. The following year he joined the army, which employed
his talent for cartooning in its Information and Education
Division. He was mustered out as a sergeant in 1946 and
joined The Washington Post, where his woodcut-like strokes
and pungent, succinct captions chronicled and skewered national
and world leaders for decades. Block coined the term
“McCarthyism” for the prosecutorial Communist-hunting
tactics of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, whom
he depicted emerging from a sewer with a thug-like heavy
beard. It was said that McCarthy shaved twice a day to avoid
resembling the caricature. He began drawing Richard M.
Nixon the same way in 1948, and Nixon, too, shaved twice a
day. Block was unperturbed, saying both men had a “moral
5 o’clock shadow.” Sometimes Nixon appeared as a vulture,
other times as an undertaker, always as a man ready to benefit
from the failure of others. When Nixon was elected president,
a Herblock cartoon showed him with a clean shave, but as the
administration became mired in Watergate, Nixon’s eyebrows
grew heavier and his wattles fleshier. Nixon, like Dwight D.
Eisenhower before him, canceled the delivery of The Washington
Post to his home when his children were young, because,
he said, “I didn’t want the girls to be upset.”
Block’s second Pulitzer Prize was awarded in 1954 for a
drawing of Stalin, who was being accompanied to his grave
by the robed figure of death. “You were always a great friend
of mine, Joseph,” the caption said. In addition to his work as
a cartoonist, for which he won another Pulitzer Prize in 1979,
Block wrote 12 books in his customary punchy style. “The
Soviet state builds bodies,” he wrote typically in one of them.
“Mounds of them.” He continued contributing cartoons to the
Post until three months before his death when he was 92. In
addition to three Pulitzers and a fourth he shared with The
Post for its coverage of Watergate, Herblock received several
honorary degrees and won dozens of journalism prizes. In
1966 he was selected to design the postage stamp commemorating
the 175th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. President Bill
bloemfontein
Clinton, who was often at the end of Herblock’s sharp quill,
in 1994 awarded him the nation’s highest civilian honor, the
Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2000 the Library of Congress
mounted a retrospective of Herblock’s work. The Washington
Post so valued Herblock that they referred to his contribution
to the editorial page as a signed editorial opinion
and not a cartoon.
[Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)]
BLOCK, PAUL (1877–1941), U.S. publisher of an early newspaper
chain. Born in Elmira, N.Y., Block made his first venture
into newspaper ownership by purchasing the Newark Star-
Eagle in 1908. He bought the Evening Sun and Morning Post
(both of Pittsburgh) in 1927 and later was president and publisher
of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Toledo Blade, and Toledo
Times. He was a contributor to Jewish and other philanthropic
causes, and donated $100,000 to Yale University in 1930 for a
study of newspapers in the modern world.
BLOEMFONTEIN, capital of the Orange Free State, Republic
of South Africa. Jewish families played an important pioneering
role in the development of Bloemfontein. Isaac Baumann
of Hesse-Cassel (1813–1881), one of the first settlers to buy land
in the new township in 1848, established the first trading store.
The earliest Day of Atonement services in Bloemfontein were
held in his house in 1871. In 1873 marriages by Jewish rites were
legalized in the Orange Free State. A Hebrew congregation
was formed in 1876, and a synagogue built in 1903. The first
president (1902–24) was Wolf Ehrlich. As the East European
element increased the communal leadership gradually passed
to them, a prominent part being played by Jacob Philips and
Henry Bradlow. Jews also took an active part in municipal affairs.
Baumann was the second chairman of the Bloemfontein
municipal board, the forerunner of the town council. His son
Gustav was the first surveyor-general of the Orange Free State.
The Baumanns fought on the side of the Boers in the South
African War (1899–1902). Moritz Leviseur, who took part in
the Basuto War of 1865–66, helped to establish the town’s first
hospital and founded the National Museum. His wife Sophie
wrote Ouma Looks Back, an account of the early days, and became
known as the “Grand Old Lady of Bloemfontein.” Wolf
Ehrlich, a friend of the Boer leader General Hertzog (later
South African prime minister), sat as a senator in the South
African parliament. Jewish mayors of Bloemfontein included
Ehrlich (1906–07 and 1911–12), Ivan Haarburger (1912–14),
and Sol Harris (1929). The community had a well-developed
network of institutions, including a fine communal center for
cultural and educational activities. A large new synagogue was
built in 1965. In 1956 the Hebrew congregation, Chevra Kaddisha,
talmud torah, and the charitable institutions combined to
form the United Hebrew Institutions of Bloemfontein. Other
Jewish institutions included the OFS provincial committee of
the South African Board of Deputies and the OFS and Northern
Cape Zionist Council. There was also a small Reform
group. The Jewish population in 1967 numbered 1,347 out of a
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 769