Chaim Bloch

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Chajim Bloch (born June 27, 1881 in Nagybocskó , Galicia , Austria-Hungary ; died January 23, 1973 in New York , also Chaim Bloch , חײם בלאך in Yiddish writings, חײם בלוך in Hebrew) was a Hasidic and Kabbalistic rabbi and Publicist who made Hasidism and its leaders known to wide circles.

Life

In 1904 Chajim Bloch married Golda (Gusta) Landmann, who was born in Narajow in Galicia and was born in 1884. They had two daughters: Regina Neugroeschel-Bloch (born 1905) and Mirjam Bloch-Berger (1910–2005).

Bloch grew up speaking Yiddish in Delatyn and was trained as a rabbi by Rabbis Moses Grunwald in Huszt , Mordechai Shalom Schwadron in Brzeżany and Aryeh Leibish Horowitz in Stanislau , and then assisted the rabbi and politician Joseph Samuel Bloch . After the outbreak of the First World War and the invasion of the Russian army in Galicia in 1914, he fled to Vienna . In 1915 he served in the Hungarian army as a field rabbi . He then worked for three years as a translator in a camp for Russian prisoners of war in Csót , Veszprém county in western central Hungary. During this time he wrote the book The Prague Golem .

From 1918 to 1920 he was rabbi of the Jewish community in Liesing near Vienna.

From 1923 to 1924 he stayed in the United States and tried to get financial support for his Ozar-Chajim publication project . Chajim Bloch, who was one of the most prominent experts on Jewish tradition and mysticism in Vienna, was together with Löbel Taubes the publisher of the Jewish Yearbook for Austria in 1932. From 1933 onwards, he vehemently opposed the spread of anti-Semitic pamphlets containing the legend of the ritual murder , and turned in 1935 with his work “Blood and Eros in Jewish Literature and Life. From Eisenmenger via Rohling to Bischoff ” directly against the anti-Semitic weekly newspaper “ Der Stürmer ” founded by Julius Streicher . After the " Anschluss " in 1938, he was for three months by the Nazis in Vienna transit camp in the Karajangasse detained. His brother Markus was murdered in a concentration camp in 1942.

Via the Netherlands in August 1938, he and his wife Golda managed to escape to the USA in 1939 , and his two daughters also escaped persecution. There he continued to publish in German, for example the book Das Jüdische Amerika - perceptions and reflections , in which he described Jewish life in the USA and introduced well-known personalities with photos and information boards. But he also wrote in Hebrew, English and Yiddish . In 1963 he became almost completely blind.

With his knowledge of Hasidic mysticism, he made the colorful personality of the ruler Ostropoler known in his publications .

Works / editions (selection)

  • Ancestral pride. Biography of Rabbi Elieser Lippmann von Strelitz. Budapest 1904.
  • The community of Hasidim, their becoming and their teaching, their life and their doings . Harz-Verlag, Berlin 1920, digital .
  • Israel the warrior of God, the Baalschem of Chelm and his golem. An Eastern Jewish book of legends. Harz-Verlag, Berlin 1920, digital .
  • On the Spirit of the East, Polish Jewish humor , Berlin 1920
  • The Prague Golem from his “birth” to his “death”. With a foreword from Berlin by Hans Ludwig Held , Harz, Berlin 1920.
  • Eastern Jewish humor . Harz, Berlin 1920.
  • Hersch Ostropoler: A Jewish Till-Eulenspiegel. His stories and pranks . Harz, Berlin 1921.
  • Talmudic wisdom. Old Jewish conversations - a selection for the youth . Verlag Das Leben, Vienna 1921.
  • God's people and their teaching . G. Engel, Leipzig 1922.
  • Kabbalistic sagas, legends about Rabbi Lurjah . Asia Major publishing house, Leipzig 1925.
  • Jewish America. Perceptions and considerations . Verlag Das Leben, Vienna-Brigittenau 1926.
  • Life memories of the Kabbalist Vital . Vernay, Vienna 1927.
  • The Jewish people in their anecdote - Ernstes u. Cheerful things from seekers of God, scholars, artists, fools, rascals, braggars, scroungers, rich, pious, free thinkers, baptized people, anti-Semites . Verlag für Kulturpolitik, Berlin 1931.
As a new edition: Jewish jokes and anecdotes: Serious and cheerful from seekers of God, scholars, artists, fools, rascals, boasters, scroungers, rich, pious, free thinkers, baptized, anti-Semites . With an afterword by Oswald Lewinter. Melzer, Neuisenburg 2006, ISBN 3-937389-76-8 .

literature

  • Bloch, Chaim . In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 . 2nd revised edition (online only).
  • Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Volume I, 1925 ff.
  • Bloch, Chaim. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 3: Birk – Braun. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-598-22683-7 , pp. 78-95.
  • Hannelore Noack: Unteachable? Anti-Jewish agitation with distorted Talmud quotations - anti-Semitic incitement through demonizing the Jews. (Dissertation) University Press Paderborn, Paderborn 2001.
  • Paul Eckhardt: Investigations into the Golem: the Golem Stories of Chajim Bloch. Collispress, Stuttgart 1977.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ozar-Chaim. Twelve centuries of Jewish life. Cultural-historical contributions from the rabbinical response literature from the beginning of its creation to the end of the 19th century
  2. ↑ a b Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration nach 1933 / International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 , Vol II, 1 Munich: Saur 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 117 f.
personal data
SURNAME Bloch, Chaim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bloch, Chaim; חײם בלאך; חײם בלוך
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hasidic and Kabbalistic rabbi and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Nagybocskó , Galicia , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH 23rd January 1973
Place of death new York