STUDIEN ZUR GESCHICHTE DER SAMMLUNG DER ALTHEBRÄISCHEN LITERATUR
Wien, D. Löwry, 1882. Item #24697
Rebound in modern paper wrappers, 8vo. , 160 pages. In German. SUBJECT (S) : Bible. O. T. -- Criticism, interpretation, etc. German language. Bible O. T. -- canon. Bloch was a "rabbi, publicist, and politician in Austria. He acquired distinction for his defense 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...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...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; Israeland 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. " (Lamed, EJ, 2007) OCLC lists just 4 copies worldwide. Pages dark but clean and intact. Good + condition. (RAB-45-9).
Price: $100.00