Jehosua (Josua / Yehoshua) Blau

Jehosua BLAU [Josua / Yehoshua / יהושע בלאו], born on September 22nd, 1919 in Klausenburg [Cluj-Napoca]/Romania (entitled residency ('heimatberechtigt') for Cluj [Cluj-Napoca]/Romania, citizenship 1938: Romania), son of Dr.rer.pol. Pinchas Paul Blau (born in 1889, merchant, later editorial journalist). In 1931, the family moved from Transylvania to Vienna and then to Baden, where his father, previously a merchant, worked as an amateur reporter. Jehosua Blau attended school for four years in Romania, two years in Budapest, and from 1931 to 1937 in Baden. He passed his school-leaving examination with distinction. After graduating from school, the whole family moved to Vienna and lived in Vienna's 3rd district, Obere Weißgerberstraße 8. In the fall of 1937, Jehosua Blau began studying Arabic at the university and, at the same time, attended the rabbinical seminary, having previously received private Talmud lessons. He was last enrolled in the spring term 1938 at the Philosophical School in the 1st year of his studies and took courses in history, psychology, and Oriental studies.

After the Anschluss, he was forced to abandon his studies and leave the University of Vienna for racist reasons under National Socialism.

Jehosua Blau and his family were able to emigrate legally to Palestine [Israel] via Trieste in June 1938, as they all had Romanian passports and his father had managed to obtain visas from the British – his parents with a capitalist certificate, Jehosua with a student certificate.
In Tel Aviv, he taught Talmud for 40 hours a week, studied Arabic, Hebrew, and biblical studies at night, and graduated with a master's degree in the spring of 1941. From 1942 to 1955, he worked as a high school teacher in Jerusalem.

He arrived in Jerusalem in 1947 with his own family—he had married teacher Shulamit Haviv in 1945, with whom he had two children. In Jerusalem, he began his academic career specializing in the history of the Jewish-Arab era. After an interruption due to the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, he received his doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1950 (dissertation: "The Grammar of Judeo-Arabic"), was a lecturer at Tel Aviv University in 1956/57, and later returned to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he became a professor of Arabic studies in 1966 (retiring in 1987). In his research, he emphasized the importance of the Jewish-Arab dual culture, and Blau was considered one of the leading international experts on the Arabic used by Jews in the Islamic sphere of influence in the Middle Ages, a special form of Middle Arabic. Visiting professorships took him to Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Yeshiva University in New York City, the University of California, Berkeley, Lorand Eötvös University in Budapest, Harvard, and the Institute for Jewish-Christian Research at the University of Lucerne.

He wrote numerous articles and books—the commemorative publication marking his 70th birthday in 1989 listed a total of 349 entries, and one of his last publications appeared in 2010.

Honors

He was an honorary member of a number of national and international academic associations, including the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (1968) and Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (1983), member (1981–1993 president) of the Academy of the Hebrew Language; founding president of the Society for the Study of Medieval Judeo-Arabic, and honorary member of the Royal Asiatic Society.

He received numerous honors and awards, including the Israel Prize (1985), an honorary doctorate from the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales in Paris (2001), honorary citizenship of the city of Jerusalem (2002), and the Franz Rosenthal Prize from the American Oriental Society.

Since 2009, he has been commemorated at the University of Vienna in the "Memorial Book for the Victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna in 1938." (online) Since 2022, his name has also been included in the "Memorial to the History Students and Teachers of the University of Vienna Expelled under National Socialism | When Names Shine," located on the first floor of the university's main building.