From the JEWISH BOOK ANNUAL 

VOLUME 52 1994-1995 / 5755 

Edited by: JACOB KABAKOFF

JEWISH BOOK COUNCIL

 New York,  New York

 

 

Bloch & Company:

Pioneer Jewish Publishing House in the West

By: ROBERT SINGERMAN

 

 

            THE EARLY HISTORY of Bloch Publishing Company in the formative years from its founding in 1854 in Cincinnati until its removal to New York City in 1901 has never been adequately documented.1 Business records of this major publisher of Judaica are no longer extant and Edward Bloch (1829-1906), the firm's founder, was not a literary man and never recorded his memoirs for posterity. Furthermore, Bloch was overshadowed by his illustrious brother-in-law and business associate, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the master builder of Reform Jewish institutions (he established the Hebrew Union College, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Central Conference of American Rabbis). Piecing together biographical data on Edward Bloch is a challenge but not an insurmountable one; source data for writing the firm's corporate history can be found deeply embedded and scattered throughout the Jewish press; namely the American Israelite, founded by Isaac M. Wise in 1854 and for many years published by Bloch, and other contemporary sources such as R. G. Dun and Company credit reports and accounts in rival Jewish newspapers.  The study that follows is an attempt to document the business activities of Bloch Publishing Company in Cincinnati, its early struggles, and eventual prominence as the "American Hebrew Publishing House" and, interestingly enough, as a major specialty manufacturer of flags.

            The son of Herman and Nannie Bloch (married 1818), Edward Bloch was born 1829 in Grafenried, Bohemia, and arrived in the United States as a teenager in 1845, settling in New York where he clerked in a clothing store. The Bloch’s were the only Jewish family in this town near the frontier with Bavaria and, as fate would have it, Theresa Bloch, Edward's sister, was a pupil of Isaac M. Wise, eventually marrying her teacher in 1844 after an extended courtship. When the young Wise, now Rabbi Wise, obtained his first American pulpit in Albany in 1846, Edward also removed to Albany where he and a partner, Arnold Kaichen, opened a lace and fancy goods store around 1851, this the year of Bloch and Kaichen's first  listing in the Albany city directory.  Bloch married Cilly Strauss and had one daughter in Albany; both the wife and child died in 1852 apparently in the same conflagration that also destroyed the business.2

            Again following his brother-in-law, the widowed Bloch came to Cincinnati in 1854 when Wise assumed the pulpit of Congregation B'nai Jeshurun, the post he held with national distinction until his death in 1900. It simply cannot be determined with any certainty when and where Edward Bloch learned the printing trade; Grayzel (note 1) writes that Bloch "worked in a printing establishment in Albany" while Madison (note 1) is less specific, only indicating that Bloch had worked for a printer (the context clearly indicates this was in Cincinnati) and Wise helped him to set up the shop in 1854 when no "cooperative printer" could be found for The Israelite. Elsewhere (American Israelite, July 20, 1899, p. 6, on the occasion of Bloch's seventieth birthday), it is stated that Bloch clerked for a year in a jewelry store during his first year in Cincinnati and prior to the establishment of the printing firm that bears his name. Wise's Reminiscences reveal that the Israelite lost $600 during its first year and Charles Schmidt, the paper's original publisher, despite having his losses repaid personally by Wise, wanted out of the unprofitable relationship.  At this juncture (summer 1855), Bloch and Company bought type, presses, and "all the printers' necessities" on a $3,000 line of credit. To quote Wise, "Not satisfied with losing money on the Israelite, we began to issue the Deborah also, and bought enough Hebrew type to found the first Jewish printing-house in the West."3

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1. Bloch celebrated its centennial in 1954 and throughout its history and early advertising has traced its year of founding to 1854 to coincide with the inception of Isaac W. Wise's weekly, The Israelite (since 1874, The American Israelite), for many years associated with the Bloch firm as its publisher. Wise's publisher, however, for the first year was Charles F. Schmidt; Bloch and Co., at 43 East Third St., only came into existence in 1855 with the Israelite's issue of July 27. For appreciations of Bloch Publishing Co., chiefly its twentieth century activity, see Solomon Grayzel, "A Hundred Years of the Bloch Publishing Company," Jewish Book Annual 12 (1953-55): 72-76; Isaac Rosengarten, "A Cultural Centennial," Jewish Forum 38:9 (Sept. 1955): 151-53; Bloch's Book Bulletin no. 111/12 (April/June 1955), containing the "Centennial Section;" and Charles A. Madison, Jewish Publishing in America (New York, 1976), pp. 74-77. For additional biographical information on Edward Bloch, see sketch on the occasion of his silver wedding anniversary with Henrietta Miller in American Israelite (henceforth cited as AI, including its previous title, The Israelite), Nov. 17, 1880, p. 166; "Das siebenzigste Wiegenfest," Die Deborah, 20 Juli 1899, p. 5 (compare with less complete English text in AI, July 20, 1899, p. 6), "Pioneer Hebrew Publisher," American Hebrew, Aug. 18, 1899, p. 477 (copied from Cincinnati Enquirer), and obituaries as follows: AI, March 29, 1906, p. 6, Cincinnati Enquirer, March 23, 1906, p. 7, and Publishers' Weekly, April 14, 1906, p. 1174.

2. Nannie Bloch's obituary, AI, Oct. 20, 1876, p. 6. The standard biographies of Isaac M. Wise are by James G. Heller, Isaac M. Wise: His Life, Work and Thought (New York, 1965) and Sefton D. Temkin, Isaac Mayer Wise, Shaping American Judaism (Oxford, 1992).

3. Isaac M. Wise, Reminiscences. Ed. by David Philipson (Cincinnati, 1901; reprint, New York, 1973), pp. 292-93. The history of Die Deborah has been studied by Joseph Gutmann, "Watchman on an American Rhine: New Light on Isaac M. Wise," American Jewish Archives 10 (1958): 135-44.

 

 

GETTING ESTABLISHED

 

            It should be made clear, however, that Hebrew printing made its appearance in Cincinnati as early as 1824 with Martin Ruter's An Easy Entrance into the Sacred Language, being a Concise Hebrew Grammar. Benjamin Levy, of New Orleans, was active in 1822-41 and is regarded as "the first American Jew to combine printing, publishing and selling" though his imprints were not Jewish ones.4 Bloch's achievement, with Isaac Mayer Wise's publications, school books, liturgies, and hymnals of the Reform movement as a perennial high-demand stock offsetting other losses, was to create a sustainable Jewish publishing house in the United States where none existed for English and German Judaica. Philadelphia's Isaac Leeser, a severe critic of Isaac M. Wise, was constantly struggling to publish his own works and translations. "No publisher," writes Bertram Korn, "... would undertake the risk of issuing his books; Leeser had to be his own publisher, business manager, proof-reader, salesman, and agent."5  L. H. Frank, a New York publisher with a small but popular list of liturgies and haggadot initiated by his father, Henry Frank, was Bloch's only potential rival.6 According to Jonathan Sarna, Bloch and the Jewish Publication Society of America of Philadelphia "held a virtual monopoly over American Jewish publishing" at the time of JPS's formation in 1888.7  

                   Bloch's early years as a printer were a struggle and prospects for success were slight. Most subscribers of The Israelite simply did not pay their bills; the country suffered a financial panic in 1857, and the Civil War deprived the Israelite of fully one half of its subscriptions and readership in the South. Even as late as 1871, the constant struggle for existence precipitated a "To Delinquents" announcement in the Israelite revealing that it cost no less than $10,000 to publish the paper and its German-language companion, Die Deborah.8  Bloch quickly learned from bitter experience with unpaid bills that a no-exceptions policy requiring all advertising copy to be paid in advance was called for; no credit was to be extended to congregations, societies, or public bodies.9 In 1856, and again in 1857 and 1858, Bloch went on collecting trips in the east while also drumming up new subscriptions and orders for advertising.10 In the Israelite's fifth year of existence (1859), fully two-thirds of the paper's subscribers were not paying their bills and on at least one occasion, Bloch was plagued by a travelling imposter posing as a collector for the paper.11

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4. Bertram Wallace Korn, The Early Jews of New Orleans (Waltham, 1969), p. 147.

5. Idem, "Isaac Leeser: Centennial Reflections." American Jewish Archives 19 (1967): 134.

6. Madeleine S. Stern, "Henry Frank: Pioneer American Hebrew Publisher." American Jewish Archives 20 (1968): 163-68. For a short period near the end of the Civil War, Bloch was the Cincinnati agent for L. H. Frank, per Occident and American Jewish Advocate 22: 9 (Dec. 1864), advertising section (repeated in issues of January and February, 1865).

7. Jonathan Sarna, JPS: The Americanization of Jewish Culture, 1888-1988 (Philadelphia, 1989), p. 143.

8. AI, March 31, 1871, p. 10. The Israelite was not above publishing in its pages lists of delinquent subscribers; e.g., Feb. 22, 1857, p. 266, March 6, 1857, p. 278. See also, "Pay for Your Papers," AI, Nov. 28, 1856, p. 166, indicating that it cost the publisher at least $5,000 a year to publish the two papers, and "On Finances," ibid., May 14, 1858, p. 359, for reliance on a mercantile agency to collect unpaid bills. Crippling losses resulting from the Civil War and recurring problems of non-payment by deadbeat subscribers well into the 1870s were candidly recalled by Wise in AI, June 25, 1875, p. 4, July 7, 1882, p. 6.

9. A/, April 4, 1856, p. 315.

10. AI, May 23, 1856, p. 372, May 8, 1857, p. 347, Jan. 8, 1858, p. 214.

11. AI, May 6, 1859, p. 351, Aug. 2, 1867, p. 6.

 

VARIED UNDERTAKINGS

 

            Yet, despite all adversity, the firm staved off bankruptcy and managed to diversify in order not to depend solely on the Israelite's pitiful earnings and poor cash flow. Bloch solicited book and job printing in English, French, German and Hebrew; for added income, contemporary ads for the company show that it took orders for coal and for book binding, sold clothing tickets, ketubot blanks (100 for $5.00), etrogim from Corfu, and Jewish calendars. It also printed patriotic envelopes during the Civil War, and routinely filled job printing orders for "plain and fancy" bill heads, circulars, receipts, business and visiting cards, invitations, programs, checks, and labels for wine, brandy, and liquor bottles.12 The earliest ad by Bloch for flags, later to be a profitable specialty of considerable magnitude, would seem to be the one in anticipation of the Fourth of July in 1858.13 The jobbing office was now doing well, sufficiently so that Bloch moved in 1856 from 48 E. Third St. to enlarged quarters opposite the post office at 27-29 E. Fourth St. where Bloch announced he could execute large orders with precision and speed. Later in that year, the confident Edward Bloch bought at auction choice portions of the Columbian Job Office's equipment and stock enabling him to do color printing in five languages augmented by a full range of plain and ornamental cuts and borders.14  With a large and expanding business, Bloch and the Israelite office moved again, this time in 1857 to a five-story building at 32 W. Sixth St. to better accommodate newspaper, book, and job printing.15

                The earliest non-serial Bloch imprint known to this writer is an ephemeral little pamphlet of a mere fourteen pages, Address Delivered before the Agricultural Society, of Ripley County, Indiana, at their Annual Fair, on the 20th Day of September, 1855 (Cincinnati: Printed by Bloch & Co.), by Stephen S. Harding, a leading abolitionist in Indiana and later to become Governor of Utah Territory and Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court.16 

                Job printing for Jewish organizations resulted in the Constitution and By-laws of the Young Men's Hebrew Literary Association of Davenport and Rock Island (1857) and the Order of Prayers printed for Chicago's Kehilat Anshe Mayriv (5618=1857 or 1858), both bearing the Bloch imprint and each known only on the basis of a single extant specimen. The long-recognized and pressing need for textbooks adapted to the needs of American Jewish youth, especially for but not limited to Reform congregations, resulted in the decision to issue Rabbi Emanuel Hecht's Synopsis of the History of the Israelites (1857), enlarged by Cincinnati's Rabbi Max Lilienthal. Works by two of Wise's rabbinical collaborators in the Reform movement also came off the press in 1857: Max Lilienthal's book of German verse, Freiheit, Friihling und Liebe and Isidor Kalisch's Guide for Rational Inquiries into the Biblical Writings. Bloch's relocation and expansion in 1857 may, in part, be explained by his involvement in the new Minhag Amerika liturgy project, the publishing cost of which was defrayed by Bloch, its publisher, according to Rabbi Wise. The comments of Isaac M. Wise on the travails of printing this landmark work, the standard American Reform prayerbook until its replacement in the early 1890s by the Union Prayer Book, are informative regarding the early years at Bloch & Co.: "The firm ... had but little money and scarcely any typesetters who were able to set Hebrew type. Yet the book appeared in Hebrew, English, and German; but, pray do not ask me how,.."17 Opposition to Reform Judaism and its progress prompted Isaac Leeser, Wise's nemesis, to print an anonymous attack on Wise signed "Lawyers" in the pages of his Occident shortly after the appearance of Minhag Amerika in 1857; this anti-Reform rejoinder singled out Bloch & Co. for allegedly keeping its store open on the Jewish Sabbath and closing it on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath.18 Attacks on Wise or Bloch as Sabbath desecrators by angered rivals continued to flare up from time to time, as in the case of the Chicago Israelite when it was launched three decades later.

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12. See representative Bloch ads for printing and binding services, AI, Aug. 10, 1855, p. 39, Nov. 7, 1856, p. 142, July 31, 1857, p. 30, Dec. 17, 1858, p. 185, March 2, 1860, p. 278, April 18, 1862, p. 330, and Oct. 10, 1862, p. 110. For ketubot (AI, Dec. 7, 1855, p.183); etrogim (AI, Sept. 25, 1863, p. 98); patriotic envelopes (AI, May 10, 1861, p. 354); clothing tickets (AI, July 18, 1856, p. 15); orders for coal (AI, Oct. 7, 1859, p. Ill), and Jewish calendars (AI, Sept. 9, 1859, p. 79).

13. A7, June 25, 1858, p. 407.

14. Ibid., April 11, 1856, p. 326, April 18, 1856, p. 334, May 23, 1856, p. 375, Nov. 21,1856, p. 158.

15. Ibid., Nov. 6, 1857, p. 140.

16. Only known copy located at Indiana State Library and not to be found in the Stephen S. Harding papers housed at the Indiana Historical Society.

17. Wise, Reminiscences, p. 345. Wise further indicates that Bloch's continued existence was very much in doubt as of late 1857 (ibid., pp. 346-47). Typographical errors in a Hebrew text printed by Bloch at the Office of the Israelite & Deborah were noted by a forgiving Isaac Leeser, himself the victim of errant printers, in the specimen pages of Isaac Mayer's Systematical and Practical Hebrew Grammar (1856); see Occident and American Jewish Advocate 14:1 (April 1856): 39.

18. Lawyers (pseud.), "A Rejoinder to 'Dixi' of the Israelite." Occident and American Jewish Advocate 15:9 (Dec. 1857): 452.

 

FURTHER GROWTH

 

            Despite suffering the loss of all its southern subscribers and the unpaid accounts owed by creditors throughout the Civil War totaling in the thousands of dollars, the firm endured and expanded.19 Bloch enlarged its premises in 1867 by taking over the adjoining building at 34 W. Sixth St.; this was a few months after Solomon Friedman came on board as a copartner. Herman Moos, editor of the Israelite's literary section and a former partner, rejoined in 1869. In 1869, the plant, with its nine steam presses and a storefront, moved into a "capacious building" at 150 W. Fourth St. Bloch's expanded operations and ability to print in English, German, and Hebrew were described in the announcement of the move as making the firm one of "largest of its kind in the country."20 Keen to diversify, Bloch successfully bid on the contract for Cincinnati's municipal printing for the year 1870 and again in 1871; payments for city printing, including printing of the Annual Reports of the City Departments of the City of Cincinnati in the 1870/71 fiscal year amounted to $6,853.66.21 

               It may be assumed that with more and more Reform Congregations adopting the Minhag Amerika liturgy, profits from sales of this prayer book helped sustain Bloch & Co., also the copyright holder, and covered other deficits. German-language printing, as in the case of Die Deborah, and the sale of imported novels, sermons, and orthodox prayer books such as the popular Rb'delheim editions also brought in needed revenue while carving out a potentially profitable market niche.22 

              The 1870s represented new ventures as well as the beginning of a string of disasters; a list published in 1871 indicates that Bloch was printing or publishing William M. Corry's influential Cincinnati weekly, The Commoner, a business oriented bulletin, The Collector, issued by Blanchard & Co., a local collection bureau, the monthly Physio-Medical Recorder, and the Cincinnati Daily Register and Strangers' Guide.23  Herman Moos, the editor of the Literary Eclectic and the American Law Record, retained his ties to Bloch by having his periodicals published by the firm. It is not without interest that two German-language Christian serials based in Cincinnati were then being printed by Bloch in 1875, the Protestantische Zeitbldtter and the Christliche Judenfreund.24 Jewish interests were not overlooked in the decade of the seventies; Rabbi Max Lilienthal initiated the Hebrew Sabbath School Visitor, the first Jewish children's weekly in America, in 1874, so Jewish children would not be compelled to read Christian Sunday school magazines or, generally, be influenced by messages of proselytism.25 Lodge printing for annual Proceedings of the B'nai B'rith (District No. 2) and Order Kesher Shel Barzel (District No. 4) district grand lodges naturally gravitated to the firm, as did substantial printing orders from the Reform movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations, headquartered in Cincinnati; e.g., its massive Proceedings.

            On the morning of July 20, 1875, a fire starting in a neighboring lithography firm led to the flooding of Bloch & Co. from water used to extinguish the fire; then, when the fire appeared to be under control, an explosion leveled the entire building with a number of firemen perishing in the collapsing ruins. Damage to Bloch & Co. totaled some $55,000, but insurance covered only $32,000 of Bloch's losses; a lifetime accumulation of Isaac M. Wise's personal papers, letters, and book manuscripts perished, as did the entire mailing list for the American Israelite and Die Deborah.26 Disaster in the form of $10,000 of water damage struck again in their rented building on Home Street later in the year when a fire broke out in the upper lofts directly above Bloch & Co.; damages, only partly insured, were said to be slight and unimportant.27 

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19. For a wealth of data on the Israelite's coast-to-coast circulation, consult Rudolf Glanz, "Where the Jewish Press was Distributed in Pre-Civil War America," Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly 5 (1972 / 73): 1-16.

20. AI, March 15, 1867, p. 3, "Enlarged-Doubled," AI, Aug. 16, 1867, p. 4, "Consolidation, Enlargement and Improvement," AI, April 30, 1869, p. 4. For additional biographical material on Moos, later to become a distinguished Cincinnati lawyer, see "Death of Herman M. Moos," AI, Feb. 1, 1894, p. 4, William Coyle, ed., Ohio Authors and Their Books (Cleveland, 1962), p. 453.

21. Bloch's bids were reported in AI, Nov. 5, 1869, p. 7 (includes contracted rates for printing and advertising services), and AI, June 30, 1871, p. 10. For records of payments made to Bloch in the "City Auditor's Report," see Annual Reports of the City Departments of the City of Cincinnati for the Year Ending February 28, 1870 (Cincinnati: Bloch, 1870), p. 73, and similar report for year ending February 28, 1871 (Cincinnati: Bloch, 1871), p. 82. Another surviving municipal imprint from this period is the Report of the Investigation of the Committees on Law and Light, of the City Council of Cincinnati, on the Price of Gas. November, 1869 (Cincinnati: Bloch, 1869).

22. Bloch's grandson, Edward H. Bloch, told an interviewer that "Income from prayer books for both the Orthodox and Reform elements supplied deficiencies incurred from other types of books," in Rosengarten, "A Cultural Centennial," p. 151. For representative Bloch advertisements for liturgies, homiletics, rabbinic, and German Judaica, see AI, July 30, 1869, pp. 6-7, April 21, 1871, p. 7, Oct. 4, 1872, p. 12, June 30, 1882, p. 419. Interestingly, a letter to the editor of The Israelite in 1868 from one Moses Surgemus echoed a then familiar and characteristic business hallmark when he praised Bloch & Co. for having "published enough books that benefitted Judaism more than their own pockets . .." (AI, March 13, 1868, p. 6).

23. AI, Dec. 8, 1871, p. 8.  

24. AI, July 30, 1875, p. 1.

25. See Morton J. Merowitz, "Max Lilienthal (1814-1882)-Jewish Educator in Nineteenth-Century America," Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science 15 (1974), pp. 57-58. The importance of publishing children's books for the American Jewish community was stressed very early in the Israelite's existence by Rabbi Max Lilienthal, "We Want Good Books for Our Jewish Youth," AI, Sept. 29, 1854, p. 94. Bloch's pre-publication announcement of the children's weekly with the rationale for its inception is to be found in AI, Dec. 26, 1873, p. 6; a glimpse into the weekly's distribution and the positive influence it enjoyed in remote Jewish schoolhouses as far away as Eureka and Reno, Nevada, and Green Valley and Marysville, California, is offered by AI, Jan. 31, 1879, p. 5. A glowing review by a French rabbi of the Hebrew Sabbath-School Visitor and other recent Bloch publications appeared in the Archives Israelites (Paris) and was promptly translated for domestic consumption; see Isaac Levy's review in AI, March 26, 1875, p. 5. 

26. "The Fire," AI, July 30, 1875, p. 1, also "A Card to the Subscribers . . ." ibid., p. 5. Contemporary R. G. Dun and Co. credit report entries for 1875 and 1876 indicate that the firm indirectly benefited from the fire in that it replaced the old presses with new, improved ones. With a solid reputation for honesty in the community and rated an excellent credit risk, Bloch & Co. (Edward Bloch in partnership with Solomon Friedman) claimed about $50,000 in capital with very few liabilities (Ohio, vol. 87, p. 302, R. G. Dun & Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration). All contemporary entries in the R. G. Dun & Co. ledgers incorrectly refer to Block (sic) & Co.

27. "Washed Out." AI, Dec. 10, 1875, p. 6. On March 1, 1876, Bloch was again permanently re-established in a five-story building at 169 Elm St., per AT, March 3, 1876, p. 6, highlighting the presence of flags waving "conspicuously in front of the house, marking distinctly the locality, that none can possibly go amiss." An illustration of Bloch's Elm St. printing plant and store appears in AI, June 18, 1880, p. 8. A third disaster struck in March, 1881, reducing the American Israelite's issue of April 1, 1881, to a single explanatory sheet; the headline of the surrogate issue told it all: "No Fire-But Water! .. . Inundated for the Third Time!"

 

 

FLAG MANUFACTURE

 

            The involvement of Edward Bloch in the manufacturing of flags was given prominent attention in 1876 with America's centennial when Bloch opened store outlets in Chicago and Philadelphia for the sale of flags, including those of all foreign nations, coats of arms, banners, and variegated bunting, as well as fancy paper lanterns, globes, and shields, directly from "one of the largest flag manufactories in the world."28 Although obituaries for Bloch declare that he was the inventor and the first manufacturer of printed flags in the United States, this family tradition is not subject to independent confirmation nor is it known who rightfully can claim to be the inventor of such flags. William E. Alcorn, a Cincinnati manufacturer of awnings, tents, circus canvass, and tarpaulins, was known to be making flags in 1853, but they were most likely produced by sewing judging by his other product lines.29 In the 1880s, Bloch variously claimed that his was "The Oldest and Largest Flag Manufacturing House, West, South and North" or was "The largest Flag manufacturer in the U. S."30 Bloch's flag business, along with three unrelated New York firms, subsequently merged into the American Flag Co., based in Troy, New York, in 1893, though Bloch and his son, Charles, successively acted as directors in the new firm, with branches apparently remaining in Cincinnati and Chicago at Bloch's former locations during the 1890s.31

            With its issue of July 3, 1874, the Israelite was renamed the American Israelite and within a few weeks, Bloch's advertising promoted the firm as the "American Hebrew Publishing House." Hebrew books were continually advertised as a specialty and Bloch, as a general agent for school books from all publishers, was attentive to the needs of Jewish Sabbath schools for texts. Rabbis were courted with new releases such as Aaron Hahn's The Rabbinical Dialectics (1879) or The American Jewish Pulpit; A Collection of Sermons by the Most Eminent American Rabbis (1881). The growing market for Jewish music was tapped by Simon Hecht's Zemirot Yisra'el (1878). A juvenile series by and large devoid of Jewish themes (among them, Dominic; or, A Good Action Always Has its Reward and The Lost Rifle) was promoted in 1881 as Hanukkah presents. Manuscripts for novels were solicited in 1878; not less than $500 was being offered for a publishable novel on American Jewish life.32 With Bloch as its publisher, the Rabbinical Literary Association of America launched the Hebrew Review in 1880. The Holy Family Manual, 770 pages in length and undoubtedly the most curious of all Bloch imprints because of its Catholic origin, came off the press in 1883, ordered and paid for by the Sisters of Notre Dame in Cincinnati. Among the most scholarly and enduring Bloch imprints must be counted Moses Mielziner's well-received The Jewish Law of Marriage and Divorce in Ancient and Modern Times (1884) and his Introduction to the Talmud (1894).33

            Calendars, sifre torah, catechisms, confirmation certificates, New Year's cards, wedding invitations, and imported Hebraica solidified Bloch's reputation as a major publisher and supplier of religious goods to the growing American Jewish community in the mass immigration period; Bloch's reputation for a quality stock and mail order service to congregations everywhere would carry forward into the next century.

            For reasons that remain unclear to this day but probably related to problems of cash flow and assignment of interest, Leo Wise, the son of Isaac M. Wise, and Edward Bloch alternated as publishers of the American Israelite; the issue of April 27, 1883 was the first one issued by Leo Wise & Co., but Bloch would replace Wise a year later with the issue of April 25, 1884. During this period, Wise also marketed his father's writings, formerly in the inventory of their original publisher; Bloch & Co. Accounts in the Jewish press reveal that Bloch's financial position was highly unsettled; on January 16, 1884, Bloch temporarily defaulted on his creditors; a terse paragraph in the American Israelite (Feb. 2, 1884, p. 4) merely stated that payments had been suspended but they resumed in full a week later. The embarrassed firm emerged from this episode as a stockholding company; creditors were to be paid "100 cents of every dollar that is due them" over the next two years.34 Leo Wise again superseded Bloch as the American Israelite's publisher on Oct. 12, 1888, and the paper, associated with Bloch & Co. since 1855, never again reverted to Bloch after that date. The final separation of Leo Wise and Edward Bloch was never explained (but see note 41); there may have been a personality conflict with Leo, the American Israelite's veteran business manager and a copartner, or Edward concluded that Cincinnati's Jewish community was rapidly being overtaken by faster growing Jewish population centers such as Chicago which offered better rewards as a home base for Jewish newspaper publishing.

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28. Bloch's obituary, AI, March 29, 1906, p. 6; for the Chicago and Philadelphia flag depots in 1876, see AI, March 3, 1876, p. 6, and more fully, "Flags, Emblems and Patriotic Decorations. A Sketch of the Enterprise of Bloch & Co., Cincinnati and Philadelphia," ibid., May 19, 1876, p. 6, reprinted from the Philadelphia Commercial and Manufacturers' Gazette.

29. Williams' Cincinnati Directory . . . Fourth Annual Issue (Cincinnati, 1853), p. 112. If not the inventor of flag printing, Edward Bloch may nonetheless be responsible (in 1858?) for the first printed flags west of the Alleghenies; see profile on Charles E. Bloch, Bloch's Book Bulletin, no. 19 (Jan. 1932): 4, and "Pioneer Hebrew Publisher," American Hebrew, Aug. 18, 1899, p. 447 (copied from the Cincinnati Enquirer). A full column ad for Bloch & Co.'s Flag Manufactory geared to the presidential campaign and political conventions in the election year of 1872 makes direct reference to manufacturing flags at his steam printing house for the last eighteen years (A7, July 5, 1872, p. 15). Bloch was awarded the contract to furnish flags and banners to the tenth Cincinnati Industrial Exposition in 1882, per AI, Aug. 18, 1882, p. 55.

30. Bloch's ad in American Jews' Annual 5645 (1884/85), opposite p. 97, and AI, July 8, 1887, p. 3. 

31. E. Bloch's obituary, Publishers' Weekly, April 14, 1906, p. 1174,  American Flag Company's Catalogue No. 2, 1895 (text kindly provided by Dr. Whitney Smith, Executive Director, Flag Research Center, Winchester, Mass.); entry for Charles Edward Bloch in Who's Who in American Jewry, vol. 3 (1938/39), p. 102; obituary of Charles Bloch, New York Times, Sept. 13, 1940, p. 17; Stephen S. Wise, "Charles E. Bloch," American Jewish Year Book 5702 (1941/42): 382; corporation reference file card for American Flag Company, at New York Dept. of State Division of Corporations and State Records, Albany, confirming firm's dissolution on Jan. 17, 1956.

32. AI, Aug. 7, 1874, p. 7, for first appearance of the "American Hebrew Publishing House" logo; Bloch's ads in AI, June 25, 1880, p. 8, and July 30, 1880, p. 40, promoting Hebrew books and school books, respectively; AI, July 8, 1887, p. 3, offering thirteen titles in Bloch's juvenile series; AI, Aug. 2, 1878, p. ,5, seeking submission of a manuscript on American Jewish life. Bloch is mentioned as one of the pioneers in Jewish music publishing by A. W. Binder, "Jewish Music in America-Historical Outline," Jewish Forum 38:2 (Feb. 1955): 44. For a representative Bloch ad for temple music and liturgies, see AI, Aug. 21, 1885, p. 3; for European imports, ibid., July 7, 1882, p. 3; for American Jewish novels, all of them Bloch imprints, ibid., June 25, 1880, p. 3.

33. See extensive worldwide list of reviews of Jewish Law of Marriage and Divorce in Ella McKenna Friend Mielziner, Moses Mielziner, 1828-1903 . . . (New York, 1931), p. 47. One reviewer was especially complimentary of this work by a professor at the Hebrew Union College for having raised the status of Jewish scholarship in America. European rabbis and others who previously judged American scholarship to be "very low and insignificant" would now know that "on the other side of the Atlantic . . . Jewish learning, solid Jewish learning, has found a home." See Occident (Chicago), Nov. 7, 1884, p. 4.

34. "Our Cincinnati Letter," Jewish Tribune (St. Louis), Jan. 25, 1884, p. 57; "Cincinnati News," ibid., Feb. 8, 1884, p. 88; R. G. Dun/OH 87/p. 395, 499, with details of credit extension and reorganization as a capital stock company. Assets were estimated at $47,000, liabilities at $23,000. Officers are recorded in the R. G. Dun report dated March 1, 1884 as Edward Bloch, president; George C. Clements, secretary; E. H. Austerlitz, treasurer.

 

 

NEW VENTURES

 

            Having survived the default and perhaps gambling on a westward shift in the American Jewish community, Bloch bought the Jewish Tribune of St. Louis; the issue of April 4, 1884, is the first under the reorganized Bloch Publishing & Printing Company's ownership. This attempt at expansion was short-lived and the paper suspended publication with the issue of April 18, 1884, this at least being the date of the last extant issue.

            Charles Edward Bloch (1861-1940) entered the firm in 1878 as a "printer's devil" and quickly mastered the business, becoming plant superintendent while in his early twenties. Charles, described as a "clever young journalist and businessman," established, with Leo Wise as editor, the Chicago Israelite in early 1885, and also managed Bloch's flag and publishing affairs in the new Chicago branch.35 The Chicago Israelite probably reverted to Leo Wise's ownership in 1888 at the same time he assumed control of the American Israelite, Die Deborah, and the American Jews' Annual. Charles Bloch, in partnership with Edward M. Newman, established a rival Jewish organ in Chicago, the Reform Advocate, in 1891, solely to disseminate the progressive views of Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, its editor.36

            Back in Cincinnati, Edward Bloch plotted new enterprises for the firm during the 1880s. Crayon portraits of England's Sir Moses Montefiore, a philanthropist and folk icon venerated by Jews worldwide and no less so in the United States, were produced in anticipation of the centenarian's birthday in 1884; orders for the portraits came in from as far away as Prague! A lithograph bearing the likeness of the recently deceased Rabbi Max Lilienthal appeared in 1882, while a portrait of Eduard Lasker, a liberal Jewish member of the German Reichstag, was marketed as a memorial tribute for home display following his death in 1884.37 The American Jews' Annual, in part a literary almanac but also containing historical articles and discussions of current Jewish affairs with a pronounced bias toward equating all Jewish progress with the advancement of Reform Judaism, was an exceedingly attractive and well designed Bloch venture inaugurated with the volume for 1884/85. The entire inaugural edition for that year, containing a poem by Emma Lazarus, "Maimonides," was quickly exhausted. Commenting on the new release for 5647, one eastern reviewer paid Bloch a faint compliment: "The cover is pretty, and the typography and the advertisements look as though it was a paying concern."38 Cincinnati's Bloch and New York's Philip Cowen, it may be noted, co-published in 1888 the Jewish Ministers' Association of America's Jewish Home Prayer Book; joint ventures between Jewish publishers were conspicuously few and far between at the time. An example of Bloch co-publishing overseas would occur in 1910 with Leon Simon's Aspects of the Hebrew Genius, published by Bloch, then in New York, and the famous London firm of G. Routledge & Sons. 

            The quest by the American Jewish community for inexpensive editions of the Hebrew Scriptures was met by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations when it obtained from Montreal's Rabbi Abraham de Sola, Isaac Leeser's executor permission to sell the Leeser Bible. Bloch was well-positioned to act as the UAHC's distributor and sole agent; by 1888, his firm obtained the copyright of this popular and frequently reprinted landmark text.39

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35. AI, Aug. 10, 1888, p. 1. Did Bloch's final separation from the American Israelite result from irreconcilable differences with Leo Wise? A contemporary source may not have been far off the mark: "Reasons assigned, something like those in a divorce case: incompatibility of temper, etc." See "Western Notes," American Hebrew, Oct. 26, 1888, p. 183 (signed "A Young American"). Rabbi Isaac M. Wise withdrew from the partnership with Bloch around 1870, per AI, "Seventieth Anniversary Supplement," July 24, 1924, p. 30, but a contemporary source (R. G. Dun/OH 80/p. 241) indicates he sold his interest in July of 1873. Biographical sketches of Leo Wise are to be found in Menorah Monthly 15:4 (Oct. 1893): 269, and American Jewish Year Book 5665 (1904/05): 207.

36. An overview of Bloch's operations in Chicago is provided by Morris A. Gutstein, A Priceless Heritage: The Epic Growth of Nineteenth Century Chicago Jewry (New York, 1953), pp. 387-89. On Edward Newman, later to gain a measure of fame as a world-traveler and lecturer, see Philip P. Bregstone, Chicago and Its Jews (Chicago, 1933), pp. 363-65.   representative ads for Bloch's bookstore and printing operations in Chicago appear ing AI, Aug. 5, 1887, pp. 2,3.

37. AI, Sept. 15, 1882, p. 90, Nov. 16, 1883, p. 3; for orders received from Prague, ibid., Nov. 28, 1884, p. 7; ad for Montefiore and Lasker portraits, ibid., July 31,1885, p. 9. 

38. AI, Sept. 26, 1884, p. 4, review by "C. A." in American Hebrew, Nov. 26,1886, p. 35.

39. "A Cheap Bible," Jewish Messenger (N.Y.), March 19, 1869, p. 4; "The Cheap Bible," AI, Nov. 11, 1873, p. 4 "A Cheap Bible," ibid., July 30, 1875, p. 4. See Bloch's ads for the Leeser Bible in AI, July 4, 1884, p. 3, and as "sole agents," ibid., July 8, 1887, p. 3; Lance J. Sussman, "Another Look at Isaac Leeser and the First Jewish Translation of the Bible in the United States," Modern Judaism 5 (1985): 180.

 

  

ALLEGATIONS OF PIRACY

 

            Two episodes involving the house of Bloch brought the firm momentary bad publicity in the eastern Jewish press in 1888. Angered by non-payment for his translation of Abraham, Mapu's Amnon: Prince and Peasant. A Romantic Idyll of Judea, then running in the American Israelite, Frank Jaffe wrote from London to New York's American Hebrew, complaining bitterly and publicly of Bloch's literary theft, its "utter lack of moral rectitude and ... gross dishonesty ..." Not only was Jaffe not paid for his translation of Mapu's Ahavat Tsiyon, completed by him only after five years of "strenuous and unceasing toil," but he was never informed by Bloch that it was being serialized in the pages of the American Israelite and, to add insult to injury, the uncompensated Mr. Jaffe's name was nowhere in evidence alongside his text. The series, initiated on April 13, 1888, ended abruptly with chapter 25 in the issue of July 20, 1888, just a few days before Jaffe's open letter ran in the American Hebrew. No explanation was ever offered to confused readers by Isaac M. Wise as editor or Edward Bloch as publisher for the sudden cancellation of Amnon: Prince and Peasant, originally sent to Bloch only to ascertain his willingness to act as the North American distributor.40 Another allegation of literary piracy surfaced in 1888 when Rebecca G. Jacobs, daughter of Philadelphia's Rev. George Jacobs, charged Bloch with dishonesty for the sake of a "small pecuniary gain" when it reprinted and sold without permission editions of her father's Catechism for Elementary Instruction in the Hebrew Faith. As it happens, the book never enjoyed copyright protection but Rebecca Jacobs was not shy about announcing to the entire world her outrage over Bloch's violation of moral principles.41

             New business came to Bloch with the creation of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, first with printing the C CAR's Year Book beginning in 1891, and then with the lucrative contract to distribute the Union Prayer Book, the new Reform liturgy supplanting Wise's Minhag Amerika. In 1905, the CCAR appointed Bloch & Co. sole agent for its •publications, with Bloch receiving 30% of the list price for the UPB and Sermons by American Rabbis, and 40% of the list price for the Union Hymnal.42 As a Jewish publishing history aside, unauthorized attempts to lift texts from the Union Prayer Book soon after its appearance were not unknown, with one infuriated rabbi-editor threatening a lawsuit against a rabbinical colleague.43

              In 1893, Joseph Bloch, Edward's brother, was manager of the firm's retail store and at this time a durable new logo, "The Jewish Book Concern" was apparently adopted for the first time to enhance the corporate identity. A glowing obituary of Joseph Bloch (he was variously a peddler and a hotelkeeper in Santa Cruz, California, and lived at different times in Mexico, Texas, and San Francisco) is undoubtedly overly lavish when it opines that "it was due to his genius that the Jewish book trade was established in Cincinnati,.."44 

             By 1900, Isaac M. Wise passed away and with Edward Bloch now advancing in years, thoughts were focused on the firm's future. New York, with its Jewish masses, overshadowed Cincinnati and for that matter Philadelphia for supremacy as the center of American Jewish life. Charles Bloch, with his father's encouragement, guided the move of Bloch's retail operations to New York in early 1901, and sold off his interest in the Reform Advocate to Edward M. Newman as part of the consolidation in New York City.45 Some sort of a physical presence, perhaps the printing facilities, was maintained in Cincinnati since Edward Bloch remained the company's president until his death in 1906, the year of the last entry for Bloch Publishing Co. in Williams' Cincinnati Directory.  

            In writing this history of Bloch & Co. from its founding until the relocation to New York, very little has been gleaned about the personal life of Edward Bloch. The reminiscences by Rabbi Clifton Harby Levy, a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College (class of 1890), mention that Bloch, as Rabbi Wise's brother-in-law, "was so generous to Rabbi Wise in all of his publishing enterprises as to impoverish himself," largely because Wise, a poor businessman, would pocket remittances for the American Israelite and Die Deborah without crediting the sender.46 The slight mention of Edward Bloch and his contributions in Leo Wise's "Israelite Personalities" penned for the paper's golden anniversary commemorative issue in 1904 was so egregious that an editorialist in the American Hebrew (most likely Philip Cowen) paused to reflect, "We miss, however, any reference to Mr. Edward Bloch, who, if we mistake not, was its original publisher, and retained his connection with it for over three decades."47 As Wise's publisher, the unsung and overshadowed Edward Bloch was praised by one historian of American Jewish journalism for the "loyal, devoted and zealous service he rendered, often at a great sacrifice of time and money ... [he] probably kept the journal alive in its days of storm and stress."48 The obituary of Edward Bloch appearing in the American Israelite hit squarely on the mark and an excerpt from it concludes this study of a Jewish publishing pioneer: "Out of this grew the Jewish publishing house which has put out more Jewish books and publications than all others in the United States combined ... He was a liberal contributor to all Jewish and sectarian charities, and was a fine exemplar of the best type of citizenship. He was educated, refined, and modest."49

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40. Frank Jaffe, "Dishonest Journalism," American Hebrew, Aug. 3, 1888, p. 200, idem, "A Question of Literary Honesty," Jewish Exponent (Philadelphia), Aug. 3, 1888, p. 12. See also the unsigned "Journalistic Ethics," American Hebrew, Aug. 3, 1888, p. 198, relating the Jaffe episode ("the Israelite has been guilty of a wanton, gross and unjustifiable breach of confidence, as well as of breaking the eighth commandment") to long-recognized violations of rights of foreign authors by American publishers in the absence of protection from an international copyright law. 

41. Rebecca G. Jacobs, "Disregarding Author's Rights," American Hebrew, Aug. 17, 1888, p. 20, idem, "The Bloch Publishing Company Again Called to Account," Jewish Exponent (Philadelphia), Aug. 10, 1888, p. 5. Is it merely a coincidence that the public complaints by Jaffe and Jacobs surfaced in the same month that Leo Wise wrested from Bloch final control of the American Israelite!

42. "Report of Recording Secretary," Year Book of the Central Conference of American Rabbis 15 (1905): 31-32.

43. Isaac S. Moses to Gustav Gottheil, Oct. 30, 1894, accusing New Haven's Rev. David Levy of pirating from the Union Prayer Book, in Richard Gottheil, The Life of Gustav Gottheil: Memoir of a Priest in Israel (Williamsport, Penn., 1936), pp. 110-11.

44. Obituary of Joseph Bloch, A7, July 4, 1895, p. 6; Wise, Reminiscences, p. 26; George J. Fogelson, "A Conversion at Santa Cruz, California, 1877," Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly 11 (1978/79): 138, 141; first appearance of ad for "Jewish Book Concern," AI, March 2, 1893, p. 2. 

45. Bloch's final move to New York and not westward to Chicago is recounted by Edward H. Bloch, grandson of Edward Bloch, in an interview with Isaac Rosengarten, "A Cultural Centennial," p. 151, supplemented by AT, Feb. 28,1901, p. 6, March 21,1901, p. 7. Cincinnati, New York, and Philadelphia as "competing centers of nascent Jewish culture" are discussed by Sarna, JPS, pp. 16-20; Bloch Publishing Company is mentioned here (p. 16) as one of Cincinnati's primary Jewish assets. Cincinnati's Jewish population in 1900 is estimated to be only 16, 000 persons, an increase of just 1,000 over the figure for 1890, per Jonathan Sarna, "'A Sort of Paradise for the Hebrews': The Lofty Vision of Cincinnati Jews," in Henry D. Shapiro and Jonathan D. Sarna, ed., Ethnic Diversity and Civic Identity: Patterns of Conflict and Cohesion in Cincinnati since 1820 (Urbana, 1992), p. 157.

46. Clifton Harby Levy, "How Well I Remember," Liberal Judaism 18:1 (June 1950): 32. For Wise's confession of sloppiness with money affairs as contributing to the American Israelite's lack of financial success, see AI, June 25, 1875, p. 5. 

47. "Editorial Notes," American Hebrew, July 15, 1904, p. 223.

48. Albert M. Friedenberg, "Main Currents of American Jewish Journalism," Reform Advocate, May 27, 1916, p. 508.

49. Obituary of Edward Bloch, AI, March 29, 1906, p. 6; Leo Wise, "Israelite Personalities," AI, June 30, 1904, jubilee number extra, p. 14.