Meir Bar-Ilan
Meir Bar - Ilan ( hebraisiert originally from Meir Berlin; born April 10, 1880 in Volozhin, Russia, † April 17, 1949 in Jerusalem) was an Orthodox rabbi and leader of the religious Zionism.
Life and work
His father, Rabbi Naphtali Zvi Judah Berlin (1816-1893), was the head of the famous Volozhin yeshiva. As a young man Meir Bar - Ilan joined the Mizrachi movement, founded in 1902, and represented it in 1905 on the seventh Zionist Congress, where he - in contrast to other Mizrachi delegates - against the Uganda plan agreed.
In 1911 he was appointed secretary of the global Mizrachi and worked in Berlin. He coined the Mizrachi slogan: " eretz israel israel le'am al pi torat israel " ( " the Land of Israel the people of Israel according to the Torah of Israel ").
In 1915 he moved to the United States, was president of the Mizrachi in the U.S. and since 1925 member of the board of the Jewish National Fund. In 1926 Bar - Ilan to Eretz Israel. He settled in Jerusalem, where he served as president of the World Centre of the Mizrachi Mizrachi and as representatives in the institutions of the Yishuv and Zionism.
Between 1929 and 1931 he was a member of the Zionist Executive. He was a leader in the rejection of the partition plan of 1937 and the White Paper of 1939. He called for civil disobedience and total refusal to cooperate with the British Mandatory authorities.
After the establishment of Israel, he formed a committee of scholars to examine the legal problems of the new state in the light of Jewish law. Bar - Ilan was the initiator of the National Religious Front, the group of religious parties, which represented a common platform in the elections to the first Knesset.
Bar - Ilan founded the religious- Zionist weekly " Ha - Ivri " - "The Hebrews ," which was published 1910-1914 in Berlin and from 1916 to 1921 in New York. 1939 to 1949 he was editor of the Mizrachi newspaper " Ha zofeh " in Tel Aviv.
His articles have appeared in anthologies such as " On the path of rebirth " and " Rabbi Meir Bar - Ilan: Collected Writings ". His memoirs " From Volozhin to Jerusalem " ( Fun Volozhin to Yerushalajim ) were originally published in Yiddish.
1943 Bar-Ilan wrote a book about his father. He encouraged the publication of the Talmudic Encyclopedia, begun in 1947. He founded an institution that it made the task of issuing the Talmud new.
The Bar - Ilan University near Tel Aviv was founded in 1955 by the American Mizrachi and named after him. A street in Jerusalem, the wear Meir forest in the hills of Hebron and the Moshav Beit Meir near Jerusalem Bar - Ilan's name.