Bloch Publishing Company
Bloch Publishing Company is a Jewish publishing company in the United States. Founded by Edward H. Bloch in 1854, it is the oldest Jewish publishing company and one of the oldest family businesses, in the United States.
Bloch Publishing Company
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- Bloch Publishing Company
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- United States
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Bloch Publishing Company is a Jewish publishing company in the United States. Founded by Edward H. Bloch in 1854, it is the oldest Jewish publishing company and one of the oldest family businesses, in the United States.
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wikidata · Q4927105 · wikipedia · Bloch Publishing Company
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Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Bloch Publishing Company • Status — Inactive • Founded — 1854 or 1855 • Founder — Edward H. Bloch • Country — United States • Headquarters — Jacksonville, Florida • Publications — Books • Topics — Judaism
History
History
Edward H. Bloch (born 1829, Grafenried, Bohemia; died 1906, Cincinnati, Ohio) founded the company in Cincinnati in 1854 (another source says 1855). Edward's sister, Theresa Bloch, had married Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise in 1844, and Edward's early activities were closely associated with those of his famous brother-in-law, who was laying the foundations of the Reform Jewish movement in the United States. When Rabbi Wise moved to Cincinnati, Bloch followed him; Rabbi Wise founded The Israelite newspaper, and after a short time Edward Bloch took over as publisher. Renamed The American Israelite in 1874, and published by Rabbi Wise’s son Leo Wise after 1888, this newspaper is said to be the longest-running Jewish newspaper in the United States. Bloch also published the German-language Die Deborah in Cincinnati, and he initiated Jewish newspapers in St. Louis and Chicago, including the Chicago Reform Advocate, founded in 1891 and edited by the influential Reform Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch. Bloch began by publishing Rabbi Wise's liturgies, hymnals, and other books for the Reform movement, and expanded to publish books and religious goods on a wide range of Jewish subjects as well as the occasional non-Jewish ones. He was also a successful manufacturer of flags; in fact, his obituary claimed that he was the inventor and first manufacturer of printed flags in the United States, although apparently this claim is not subject to independent verification. Edward's son, Charles E. Bloch (1861–1940), succeeded his father in control of the company. He opened a branch in Chicago and then moved the company to New York City in 1901 (although Edward Bloch remained in Cincinnati, and held the title of president, until his death in 1906). The company called itself "The Jewish Book Concern" and its New York building became the largest Judaic bookstore in the country. The company was then run in turn by Charles's son, Edward H. Bloch (1898–1982), and then by the second Edward's son, the second Charles E. Bloch (1927–2006). During this time, the small-book market declined and the company's operations contracted but continued. After the second Charles' death in 2006, his son, Mitchell E. Bloch, took over as the fifth generation of the Bloch family to run the company, and the company relocated from its historic offices in New York to Jacksonville, Florida. As of 2021, the company no longer seems to be active.
Identity and overview
Identity and overview
The following is established of the heading itself. The register further records that bloch Publishing Company is associated with United States.
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- United States
Notable Books
Bloch Publishing published a wide variety of books of Jewish interest, both scholarly and popular, including such classics as A Book of Jewish Thoughts by Rabbi Joseph Hertz; Peony by Pearl S. Buck; Joseph Klausner's Jesus of Nazareth; and Hugo Bettauer's The City Without Jews. Bloch Publishing produced a series of long-running Jewish cookbooks that were influential in the development of American Jewish cuisine. “Aunt Babette’s” Cook Book was first published in 1889 and was the first truly successful American Jewish cookbook. Along with traditional Jewish recipes, it also contained an extensive selection of recipes for treif (non-Kosher) ingredients such as pork, oysters, and shellfish, and in this and other ways reflected its roots in the assimilationist tendencies of the 19th-century Reform Jewish movement. After many years of success, in 1918, Bloch replaced "Aunt Babette's" Cook Book with a more Kosher-observant successor, Florence Kreisler Greenbaum's The International Jewish Cook Book, authored by a Hunter College graduate; Bloch billed it (not quite accurately) as "the first strictly kosher cook book ever published in English in this country." In 1941, Mrs. Greenbaum's book was replaced by a more modern, expanded volume, The Jewish Cook Book, written by Mildred Grosberg Bellin, a Smith College graduate who had already written a successful, smaller menu planner/cookbook for Bloch called Modern Jewish Meals. Bellin's encyclopedic, 3,000-recipe cookbook was most recently revised and reissued in 1983 as The Original Jewish Cookbook.
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- “Bloch Publishing Company”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority record
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q4927105: Bloch Publishing Company
General reference · Wikidata
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Robert Singerman, “Bloch & Company: Pioneer Jewish Publishing House in the West” , Jewish Book Annual, Vol. 52, pp. 110-30.
- 2.Bloch Publishing Company official website.
- 3."Reform Advocate", in Jewish Encyclopedia.
- 4.University of North Carolina Press. A History of the Book in America: Volume 4: Print in Motion: The Expansion of Publishing and Reading in the United States, 1880-1940. 387. 2015. 978-1-4696-2582-9.
- 5.Hertz, Joseph Herman. A Book of Jewish Thoughts. Bloch Publishing Company. 1997. 978-0-8197-0651-5.
- 6.Buck, Pearl S. Peony. Bloch Publishing Company. 1990. 978-0-8197-0593-8.
- 7.Klausner, Joseph. Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times, and Teaching. Bloch. 1989. 978-0-8197-0565-5.
- 8.Bettauer, Hugo. The City Without Jews: A Novel of Our Time. Bloch Publishing Company. 1991. 978-0-8197-0594-5.
- 9.Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. Getting Comfortable in New York: The American Jewish Home, 1880-1950. The Jewish Museum. 75–105. 1990. 9780873340656.
- 10.“Aunt Babette” [pseudonym for Bertha F. Kramer], “Aunt Babette’s” Cook Book (Cincinnati, Bloch Publishing, 1889). An online copy of "Aunt Babette's" Cook Book is available at Michigan State University's website Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project.
- 11.Florence Kreisler Greenbaum, The International Jewish Cookbook (New York, Bloch Publishing, 1918). An online copy of the second edition of this book, published in 1919, is available at Michigan State University's website Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project.
- 12.Mildred Grosberg Bellin, The Original Jewish Cook Book (New York, Bloch Publishing, 1983), .
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This entry is compiled from 8 catalogued sources across 4 independent registers. The registers consulted are Crossref registry, Wikidata, Internet Archive and Wikipedia. Every statement above is held against the register that stated it; where the registers are silent, the entry is silent.
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 17 August 2026.
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