UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 76, 24 December 1918, Page 6

UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

CONCENTRATING THE NATIONAL SPIRIT.

A Zidn correspondent contributes to "The- Tiines'j an article on the new Hebrew university nt' Jerusalem, the foundation-stone of which was recently laid under Allied auspices. The idea of a Jewish university has a rather long story. Some twenty years ngo a group of young Zionists began propaganda in favour of the foundation of a special university for Jews. ' At that time it was premature to think of Jerusalem, so they meant a university anywhere—somewhere in free Europe. Such an institution was an obvious necessity in those days when thousands of young Jews of both sexes in Kussia found the gales of the local faculties shut in their faces, and were compelled to go to Germany, Austria, or Switzerland for their studies. There they had to live, in surroundings foreign to' their own mentality and habits, and therefore not seldom unfriendly—unfriendly sometimes to the extent of actual bo.yeottage. Besides, half of them, if not the majority, had to face permanent But what especially aggrieved the initiators of the movement was the dispersion of young Jewish intellectual forces, which,' if .collected together, and submitted to. uniform educational influences, could be turned into a great redeeming factor in Jewish life. A Jewish university was so obviously indispensable that it met with the fate of all true solutions of social problems—it was ridiculed, rejected, and forjjotten—forgotten by all except ttie initiators, or'more- exactly, the principal initiator, Dr. Chaim .Weizmann,

The effects of a Hebrew university will roach ti"' beyond its educational purposes. In the first place, it will be n powerful weapon in inner Jewish politics throughout the world. Beyig by its very nature above party strife, jt will unite all forces, and attract co-operation of such groups and personalities as would perhaps shrink from open' collaboration with othor forms of the Jewish national renaissance. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Russian Jews, and a Rood many of other countries—just the most-respon-sive elements from a Jewish nation's point of view—will .probably prefer the Jerusalem academy, to their local .ones, in this way the dream of gathering the dispersed intellectual forces linder one "spiritual leadership will be, realised. Jn Palestine herself the universitj will definitely secure the moral position of the Jews as a civilising clement, thus helping to counter-balance, their numerical inferiority. '.....

One of the moit complicated problem* nf rlie Zionists 'in" always i*»i Hint of nttractinp into Palestine sufficieiit numlipts of the, infelli< r entsia In supply Ipie'iprs, doVtor*. lawvprs. pnginep''s. ofliemls. or simply social workers. - Belles their immediate va'ne. these elements pn==pss relatively hiq:h .'tii"(liv<h.nf life, nn'l inereice Hie demand nn local I "Knur. But l'ip inlelliTpnUin O" 1 !- "»oe« whore tVre n-e at Wit ('"• lwnnin"« of an adequate milieu. This will' be s-upTiiiert liv Hie Huii-i>iNi|y.