Bar-Ilan University–A Question of Identity

Abstract

David Ben-Gurion expressed the feelings in the early fifties to establish a religious university in Israel. In an attempt to neutralize the opposition, the founders of Bar-Ilan renounced claim to public funding and undertook to raise the necessary budgets solely from overseas philanthropy. Modern universities cannot exist from private endowments and contributions certainly not in Israel. Israeli students are not able to pay the kind of fees that cover the deficit. Bar-Ilan embodies a miniature version of the same crisis of identity. It raises questions not only about the nature of the university, but about the secular suppositions on which the whole society is based. But, the question of Bar-Ilan's corporate identity is bound up with the identity of the State of Israel. Major international conferences are sponsored by Bar-Ilan's various faculty bodies that are held on such subjects as Prayer in Our Time, The Bible and Us, The Apprehension of the Divine and the Search for Jewish Identity.