HOCK, SIMON

HOCK, SIMON (Sinai ; 1815–1887), historian and journalist. A Prague businessman, Hock collected a vast body of material on old Jewish Prague, published in part in his friend Koppelmann *Lieben's Gal-Ed (1858), and mainly after Hock's death by David *Kaufmann, as Mishpehot Prag (1892). Writing anonymously because of the censorship, in the 1840s Hock was correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums and the Orient, and during the 1848 revolutions reported for the Oesterreichisches Centralorgan on the anti-Jewish outbreaks connected with these uprisings. In a number of his articles he demanded that the Prague community be made more democratic. Especially interesting is the degree of Jewish national consciousness he displayed. Hock vigorously opposed radical reform, mainly as exemplified by Mendel *Hess and his Israelit des XIX. Jahrhunderts, claiming that from the champions of Reform would emerge a hierarchy suppressing freedom of religious practice such as Judaism had never known. He contributed articles on Jewish scholarship to I.H. *Weiss' Beit Talmud and other periodicals, and was among the founders of the *Afikei Yehudah association (1869). His unpublished correspondence is preserved in the Central Jewish Museum, Prague.

bibliography:

D. Kaufmann, in: S. Hock, Mishpehot Prag (1892), 1–36 (Ger.); B. Wachstein, in: Jewish Studies in Memory of G.A. Kohut (1935), 25–40 (Heb. section); J. Shatzky, in: S.W. Baron (ed.), Freedom and Reason (1951), 413–37; S.W. Baron, in: jsos, 14 (1952), 140–4; O. Muneles, in: Judaica Bohemiae, 1 (1965), 69–74; idem, Starý židovský hřbitov v Praze (1955), 94–99; Y. Tury, Mehumah u-Mevukhah be-Mahpekhat 1848 (1968), index.