[citation needed] When he was eleven he left home to learn in the yeshiva Rabbi Moshe Charif in Vekshena,[1] and at the age of thirteen (or fifteen),[further explanation needed] his parents sent him to Kelmė to study in the yeshiva of Rabbi Eliezer Gordon.

[3] In 1910 Gordon died and Bloch returned to Telshe where he succeeded his father-in-law as community rabbi and rosh yeshiva.

In the 1920s, to counter the influence of the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment) on the city's youth, he founded elementary schools for boys and girls which incorporated secular studies, as opposed to a strictly Torah study-based curriculum; some criticized him for this initiative; he was backed by the Chofetz Chaim, one of the leaders of European Jewry at the time.

[1][4] Aside from his leadership role as rabbi and rosh yeshiva in Telshe, Bloch also served as the head of the Agudas HaRabbonim of Lithuania, and was a member and supporter of the organization, Agudath Israel.

[6] His daughter, Perel Leah, married Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Katz, later the co-founder of the Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland with Eliyahu Meir Bloch.