Family collection

Bloch Family

The Bloch rabbinic family and its role in the Telshe Yeshiva and Yavneh schools in Lithuania and Cleveland.

A family at the center of Telz

Rabbi Yosef Yehudah Leib Bloch (1849–1930), a student of the Lithuanian yeshiva world and a proponent of Mussar, joined the Telshe leadership as Eliezer Gordon’s son-in-law. He later succeeded Gordon as rabbi and rosh yeshiva. Sources credit him with educational and organizational growth across the Telz institutions.

His sons included Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Bloch, who succeeded him as rosh yeshiva; Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch, who helped reestablish Telshe in Cleveland; and Rabbi Zalman Bloch, a spiritual leader and administrator. The family’s role also reached the women’s schools through Avraham Yitzchak’s daughters Rachel Sorotzkin and Chaya Bloch Ausband.

Direct family line

From Mordechai Bloch to Chaim Dov

Rav Mordechai Bloch → Rav Yosef Yehuda Leib Bloch → Rav Eliyahu Meir Bloch and Rivka Kaplan → Hadassa Chasya Bloch → Rabbi Dr. Bentzion Sorotzkin → Chaim Dov Sorotzkin. Chaim Dov reports that Hadassa Chasya was the oldest child and that only she and her father survived the war.

Open the full family tree

Educational legacy

Telz

Yosef Yehudah Leib Bloch

Rosh yeshiva after Eliezer Gordon; shaped the school’s Mussar and institutional system.

Cleveland

Eliyahu Meir Bloch

Escaped Lithuania during the war and reestablished Telshe with Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Katz.

Women’s education

Rachel Sorotzkin & Chaya Ausband

Daughters of Avraham Yitzchak Bloch who continued Yavneh educational work in Cleveland.

Family testimony

Rav Eliyahu Meir Bloch’s family

Chaim Dov identifies Rivka Kaplan as Rav Eliyahu Meir Bloch’s prewar wife and Hadassa Chasya as their eldest child. He reports that only father and daughter survived the war. Nechama was a second wife after the war. Their children were Rav Yosef Zalman Bloch and Miriam, who married Rav Dovid Barkin, a Telshe teacher in Cleveland who has since died.

This resolves what looked like a conflict between a Hebrew biography naming Nechama and the family’s identification of Rivka Kaplan: the names refer to two marriages at different times.

Documentary record

Bloch at Yavneh and Telshe

Rav Yosef Yehuda Leib Bloch gave the keynote at the Yavneh girls’ gymnasium dedication on December 12, 1920.
Rav Avraham Mordechai Bloch is named among founding activists.
A 1941 letter from Rav Avraham Yitzchak Bloch is documentary support for the Rachel Bloch–Rav Boruch Sorotzkin marriage and for the Gordon double-son-in-law relationship described in the family tree.
No reviewed student record yet proves attendance at prewar Yavneh by a particular Bloch daughter.