BLOCH, MOSES

BLOCH, MOSES (1815–1909), rabbi and author. Bloch, who was born in Ronsperg, Bohemia, served as rabbi in several cities of Bohemia and Moravia. In 1877 he was appointed together with david kaufmann and wilhelm bacher to the academic staff of the newly founded rabbinical seminary in Budapest. Bloch was professor of Talmud and Codes and also the rector of the seminary, in which capacities he served for 30 years. His main work was Sha'arei Torat ha-Takkanot (in 7 volumes, 1879–1906) which traces, on the basis of talmudic sources, the development of takkanot from Moses to the end of the talmudic period. In a sequel to this work, Sha'arei ha-Ma'alot (1908), Bloch gives a detailed exposition of the various states and degrees of holiness, ritual and family purity as defined in the Mishnah and Talmud. Bloch published important monographs, in German and Hungarian, on biblical and talmudic law, in the yearbooks of the Budapest Seminary. He published the Prague 1608 edition of the responsa of meir b. baruch of rothenburg , together with notes and indexes (in 1885; 18963), and also some hitherto unpublished responsa of R. Meir for the Mekize Nirdamim (1891). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sefer ha-Yovel… Moshe Aryeh Bloch (1905), ix–xxiv; Jahresbericht der Landes-Rabbinerschule in Budapest, 31 (1908), 3–4; 32 (1909), iii–x. (Moshe Nahum Zobel) BLOCH, MOSES RUDOLPH BLOCH, MOSES RUDOLPH (1902–1985), physical chemist. Born in Czechoslovakia, Bloch studied chemistry at the Universities   of Prague and Leipzig, and then proceeded to Switzerland and received his doctorate in physical chemistry at Berne in 1926. From 1927 to 1933 he headed the department of metallography and X-ray spectrography at the Higher Technical Institute of Karlsruhe. His researches on silver iodide and refrigeration were interrupted when the Nazis came to power, and he thereafter served as consultant on the technology of refrigeration in Holland, England, and France. Immigrating to Ereẓ Israel in 1936 he worked at the potash works at the Dead Sea, where he introduced a method of increasing evaporation by the sun and was head of the research division of the works. From 1940 to 1968 he was a member of the Scientific Council of Israel and the Advisory Technological Council of the Israel Government. In 1967 he was guest professor for research on water resources at the Hebrew University and at the Institute of Atomic Physics at Heidelberg from 1967 to 1968. Bloch also undertook research on bromine and potash in nature, and climatic and geological research. He was awarded the Israel Prize for Science in 1966.