Bar-Ilan University

Bar-Ilan University (BIU; Hebrew: אוניברסיטת בר-אילן‎ Universitat Bar-Ilan) is a public university in the city of Ramat Gan in the Tel Aviv District, Israel.

Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is now Israel's second-largest academic institution. It has nearly 26,800 students (including 9,000 students in its affiliated regional colleges) and 1,350 faculty members. Bar-Ilan University has eight faculties: Exact Sciences, Life Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, Jewish Studies, Medicine, Engineering, and Law. There are also interdisciplinary studies.

The university aims to forge closer links between Torah and universal studies, "to blend tradition with modern technologies and scholarship, and teach the compelling ethics of Jewish heritage to all... to synthesize the ancient and modern, the sacred and the material, the spiritual and the scientific."

History

Bar-Ilan University has Jewish-American roots: it was conceived in Atlanta in a meeting of the American Mizrahi organization in 1950, and was founded by Prof. Pinkhos Churgin, an American rabbi and educator. When it was opened in 1955, it was described by The New York Times "as Cultural Link Between the [Israeli] Republic and America". The university was named for Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan (originally Meir Berlin), a Religious Zionist leader who served as the inspiration for its establishment. Although he was trained in Orthodox seminaries in Berlin, he believed there was a need for an institution providing a dual curriculum of secular academic studies and religious Torah studies.

Bar-Ilan (disambiguation)

Bar-Ilan ("son of the trees") is a family name using Jewish-Aramaic patronymics, in this case poetically related to Israeli landscape. Bar-, meaning "son of" in the Aramaic language, is equivalent to the word Ben (in Hebrew: בֶּן‎, son of).

People with the surname Bar-Ilan:

Bar-Ilan may also refer to: