Rabbi Joseph Samuel Bloch z'l

 Rabbi Joseph Samuel Bloch z’l

Joseph Samuel Bloch. (2023, August 31). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Samuel_Bloch

This is a rabbi of Polish (Galician) origin who spent most of his career in a poor Austrian suburb. But he was of great intelligence, a star pupil of Rabbi Joseph Shaul Nottensohn, and played an essential role in refuting and ultimately publicly humiliating a rabid anti-Semite.

The story follows below, as found in the introduction to the book, “The Wisdom of the Talmud” by Benzion Bokser.

The most spectacular campaign against the Talmud was led by August Rohling (1839-1931), a professor of Hebrew Antiquities at the University of Prague. His Der Talmudjude (The Talmud Jew) went through 17 editions, reaching a circulation of 200,000 copies in Austria alone. Rohling repeatedly prefaced his slanderous material with the offer of 1,000 Taler "if Judah managed to get a verdict from the German Association of Orientalists that the quotations were fictitious and untrue." The challenge was taken up by Joseph S. Bloch, Rabbi at Florisdorf and later a member of the Austrian Parliament, who offered 3,000 Taler if Rohling could prove that he was able to read a single page of the Talmud chosen at random by Rohling himself. Accusing Rohling of ignorance and perjury, Bloch dared him to bring a libel suit. Because of his professional standing, Rohling could not evade the issue and finally charged Bloch with libel before a Vienna magistrate. The court was anxious to thoroughly study the subject and requested the Rector of the University of Vienna, Hofrat Zscholk, and the German Association of Orientalists to appoint two experts. It conceded to Rohling's request both these experts be "full-blooded" Christians. Professor Theodor Noeldeke of the University of Strassburg and Professor August Wuensche of Dresden were selected. From time to time, additional experts were called in. After two and a half years, the report was ready. The trial was to start November 18, 1885, but before the hearings began, Rohling, afraid of an open exposure, withdrew all his charges. The court sentenced him to pay the cost of the trial, and, disgraced, he was retired from his university post. Rabbi Bloch tells the entire story of this dramatic encounter in his “Israel and the Nations.”

Besides his brilliant defeat of Rohling, Rabbi Bloch acted wisely against those still pushing the ancient blood libel conspiracy upon the Jews in the Austro-Hungarian empire. As seen in the paragraph
below from the Encyclopedia Britannica:

He left the rabbinate and, from 1884 to 1921, published Österreichische Wochenschrift (“Austrian Weekly”), financed by a Christian, Baron Scher, in which anti-Semitism was uncompromisingly attacked. Bloch carried on the fight in the Austrian parliament, of which he was a member three times during the years 1883–85 and 1891–95. In 1893, he instituted criminal proceedings against three men who had accused a group of rabbis of the blood ritual. The men were found guilty of conspiracy and imprisoned.