The Maccabaean

THE ruin of Palestine was the signal for the establishment of an institution of learning. The fall of the Temple was closely followed by the opening of a Talmudical academy. When Johanan ben Zakkai, its founder, said to the Roman conqueror: “Give me Jabneh and her sages,” he was looking forward with a prophetic eye to an eventual restoration. With a prescience little less than divine, he seized the means that were to prepare for it. He perpetuated the study of Jewish tradition, and thereby preserved the Jewish people. Today, when that people are confronted with the restoration he planned for, their first act once more has been to establish an institution of learning. Their representative, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, has laid on the Mount of Olives the cornerstone of the Hebrew University. Let us discuss the launching of this University of ours: its past vicissitudes, its present needs, its future prospects.

The history of the Hebrew University begins, like the history of the Jewish National Fund, with Professor Hermann Schapira, the Russian Jew who taught mathematics in a German University. Schapira’s project slumbered on till 1901 when, after his death, the Fifth Zionist Congress took it up. The action of the Congress led to the publication of a pamphlet, entitled “Eine jüdische Hochschule,” a pamphlet, which curiously enough, resembled “Auto-Emancipation” and “Der Judenstaat” in that it did not insist upon Palestine as a locale. “Eine jüdische Hoch- schule” suggested that, pending the possibility of a university in the land of Israel, the institution might be located in some Nachtasyl—in England or in Switzerland.

It was not until 1908 that a non-Zionist, Dr. Israel Abrahams, insisted that the University should be located in Jerusalem. I do not know just how Dr. Abrahams came to advance this idea. It would be curious to know. In any events, this action of a non-Zionist recalls the American rabbi, also a non-Zionist, who discovered the need of a Jewish university in America. This need you will concede is not at present extremely acute.

Some three years later, about 1911, a movement began in Germany to exclude Russian Jewish students from German universities. This agitation was due to the fact that Jewish young men, barred from the universities of their native land, had come in large numbers to the universities of German-speaking countries. Such anti-Jewish tendencies were specially rife in medical faculties, since Jews now, as well as in the middle ages, are particularly inclined to study medicine. A number of German universities took steps to exclude Russian Jews from their medical schools. Consequently the question of a Jewish medical faculty in Jerusalem began to be agitated.

Besides these impulses from the Diaspora, additional pressure for a university was brought to bear from Palestine. The Jaffa Gymnasium began to turn out graduates. Where were they to go to continue their studies? Admission to a non-Jewish university meant expatriation. There were, to be sure, universities close at hand in Beirut, where there is an American Protestant and also a French Catholic

foundation. Some Jews and some Arabs had gone to Beirut. It has been said that some of the Jews who went were considered meshummadim, and some of the Arabs who went came out Anti-Semites. With the intense feeling existing in Palestine between different religions, we could hardly expect that Jews should be well-disposed toward Protestant and Catholic foundations, or that these foundations should endeavor to instill in the minds of Arabs a kindly feeling toward us. Still it was clearly not to the interests of Zionism to permit Jewish students to leave the country, and to neglect a means of winning over the Arab population. The situation called for action.

Finally, in 1913, the 11th Zionist Congress heard the masterly report of Chaim Weizmann, a Jew who is a wonderful combination of dreamer and statesman. His leadership in this matter, as in others, has been vigorous and astute. It is interesting to note that he is a professor in Manchester. Manchester is one of a very important group of universities in the great cities of England, such foundations as London, Birmingham, and Liverpool. These institutions in our own generation have revolutionized the English learned world. Oxford and Cambridge, with their comparative indifference toward scientific research, had been holding England back long enough. At last Englishmen grew weary of being told that the great minds of their country were outside college walls. They established or rejuvenated the universities in the large towns. These institutions, taking as their model the universities of France and Germany, brought new vigor and new originality into English intellectual life. Weizmann was fresh from one of these foundations and thus was especially qualified to plan a new University. As a result of his report, the Congress subscribed some $90,000 to further the project. Later, a commission formed by the Actions Committee purchased a tract of land on the Mount of Olives, on which the cornerstone of the University has been laid. Considerable additional sums have been contributed for the University, special note being due to the recent gift of $25,000 by Mr. Jacob H. Schiff.

Such, in general, is the history of the University up to the present. The project is now facing a period of transition. Conditions in the world have changed, and there must be readjustments to meet them. It is a significant fact in this connection that Mr. Sacher, who published in 1915 an interesting pamphlet on “The Hebrew University,” has just issued a revised edition of it. I regret that his second edition has been inaccessible to me. At the risk of being anticipated by Mr. Sacher, I should like to point out some of the changed conditions just referred to.

In the first place, the European world has been transformed. The immediate need which forced action in 1913 was the exclusion of Jews from Russian and German Universities. This need will in all likelihood disappear. Europe cannot go back to ante-bellum conditions. Whatever the eventual result of the present political upheaval may be, Russia and Germany cannot return to the ancien régime. Whatever government evolves from Bolshevism and anarchy