Died 1845 (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. (31) pages, 138 leaves for a total of 307 pages. 190 x 117 mm. This volume, one of three published, deals with Africa, including Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Sahara desert, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, and some other countries or regions and subjects. Notations in Russian on free endpapers include: "To the gentleman Buyer of the First Guild", which was a well known rank of merchant that certain educated Jews were able to attain. Becoming a merchant of the first guild usually require conversion to Christianity. It allowed them to live beyond the Pale of Settlement. Samson (Simson) ben Isaac Ha-Levi Bloch was a Galician author; born in Kulikow, near Lemberg, 1782. He died there Oct. 7, 1845. He received the usual Talmudical education, but was also studied the Bible and Hebrew grammar, not common in Galician curriculum at the time. He made the acquaintance of his uncle's illustrious pupil, Nachman Krochmal, and their friendship lasted to Krochmal's death in 1840. Bloch married early, went into business without any training or knowledge of the world, failed at it, drifted from one occupation into another, and remained poor all his life. But he persevered, trying to make a name for himself in literature. He studied German and other languages, and many Jewish and non-Jewish commentaries on the Bible. He was an early devotee of the "Haskalah." His first literary attempt resulted in the publication of the epistle which Solomon ben Adret wrote against the study of philosophy, especially by young men, and the famous response by the poet Jedaiah Penini or Bedersi, known as "Hitnazlut ha-Bedarshi" (Bedersi's Defense of Philosophical Studies), Lemberg, 1809. In 1812 Bloch was called to Vienna to fill the place of corrector in the Hebrew printing-establishment of Anton Schmid, made vacant by the death of the grammarian Ben Ze'eb. There he translated into Hebrew Manasseh ben Israel's "Vindiciæ Judæorum" from the German translation of it by Dr. Marcus Herz, and published it with an introduction and a biographical sketch of the author (Vienna, 1813). Family affairs compelled his return to Kulikow, and, after several years of continual struggle with poverty, he took Krochmal and Rapoport advice and took up the writing of Hebrew books as a profession. In 1822 appeared the first volume of his important work, "Shebile 'Olam" (Paths of the World), a description of the geography and Asia's countires (Zolkiev). It still has a literary value on account of its incomparable style and of the attacks on the folly and superstition of the Eastern nations contained therein, which were really intended for fools and deluded people nearer home. The second volume (Africa) is even better than the first, and is interspersed with biographies of Alfasi, Maimonides, and other famous Jews who were born or lived in Africa (Zolkiev, 1827). Bloch journeyed through Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria, to obtain subscriptions for his work (see the 7 pages of their names at the beginning of the book). He was honored and assisted by the enlightened wherever he came; but the treatment accorded to Hebrew authors by the general public, especially by the ignorant among the wealthy classes, so disgusted him that he never finished the volume on Europe, although the sections describing Spain, Portugal, and part of France were already written. His last years were spent in poverty and disappointment in his native city, with visits to neighboring Lemberg and Zolkiev. At his death he left his 9 year-old daughter to the guardianship of his intimate friend R. Hirsch Chajes of Zolkiev. Bloch translated into Hebrew Zunz's biography of Rashi, to which he wrote an introduction and many notes (Lemberg, 1840). He also wrote many letters on literature which appeared in various Hebrew periodicals. The most important of them is on philosophy and Kant, in "Kerem Hemed," v. 1, letter 34. The unfinished part of his geography of Europe was published under the title "Zehab Sheba" (Zahav Sheva).