Rabbi, politician, journalist, and crusader against ant-Semitism, particularly the canard that Jews use the blood of Christians in the Passover ritual.
After serving as a rabbi in several small communities, he settled in Florisdorf, a suburb of Vienna. At the time, anti-Semitism was gaining momentum in Austria. It culminated in the notorius trial, in 1882, of 15 Jews living in Tiszaeszlár who were accused of murdering a 14-year-old girl named Esther Solymosi to use her blood for the coming Passover ceremonies.
When August Rohling, of the Catholic theological faculty at the University of Prague, claimed that he could prove under oath the actuality of the blood ritual, Bloch retaliated.
In a series of articles, he accused Rohling of ignorance and deceit, and Rohling was compelled to sue for libel. He withdrew his suit. Nevertheless, Bloch published the documents he had prepared for the trial.
He left the rabbinate and from 1884 to 1921 published Österreichische Wochenschrift ("Austrian Weekly"), financed by a Christian Baron Scher, in which anti-Semitism was uncompromisingly attacked. Bloch carried on the fight inn the Austrian parliament, of which he was a member three times during the years 1883-85 and 1891-95.
In 1893 he instituted criminal proceeding against three men who had accused a group of rabbis of the blood ritual. The men were found guilty of conspiracy and imprisioned.
Two volumes of Bloch´s uncompleted memoirs appeared under the title Erinnerungen aus meinen (1922; My Reminiscences).
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