Meir Bar-Ilan

Meir Bar-Ilan was born in 1880 in Valozhyn

Meir Bar-Ilan was born Meir Berlin in Valozhyn in 1880. He was the youngest son of Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, head of the Volozhin Yeshiva, and his second wife.

He studied at the Volozhin Yeshiva and, after his father died in 1894, at yeshivas in Telshe, Brisk and Novardok. He also learned with his grandfather, Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein. After receiving rabbinic ordination in 1902, he attended the University of Berlin.

In 1905 he joined the Mizrachi movement and was a delegate to the Seventh Zionist Congress. In 1911 he founded the Hebrew weekly Ha'Ivri in Berlin. He moved to the United States, where he led the American Mizrachi movement and founded the Mizrachi Teachers Institute in 1917.

He settled in Jerusalem, where he founded the daily Hatzofeh and started the Encyclopedia Talmudit. He opposed the 1937 Peel Commission plan and the 1939 White Paper. He headed the Zionist Executive Committee and was a member of the Provisional State Council.

After 1948 he focused on scholarship and set up a committee to study the legal problems of the new state through Jewish law. He died in 1949. Bar-Ilan University, founded in 1955, was named after him.