The four volume
series of the History of the Hebrew University Project is devoted to the development of the idea and of its implementation during the pre-state period.
The previous three volumes expanded in a great number of scholarly articles on
the complex stories which made up this history from a great variety of aspects
– scientific and academic, political and organizational, economic and social.
The present volume, the last part of
the project, seeks to focus on the individuals, the personalities of the people
who made the university become a reality; those who struggled for its
foundation, and the pioneering scholars and scientists who laid the basis and
shaped the Hebrew University. It opens
a window for the wider public to become familiar with the story of the Hebrew
University without the need to penetrate into the complexity of scientific and
other issues dealt with in previous volumes.
The story of the university is the
story of the enormous efforts involved in bringing prominent scholars and scientists
to Eretz Israel, then a remote and marginal corner in the Middle East. These
efforts were accompanied with debates of principle and personal controversies
within and outside of the university about academic and national
considerations. Despite all difficulties, criticisms and doubts, the founders
of the university succeeded in building an institution of intellectual
excellence that would become a pillar in the project of Jewish national
renaissance and prepared the basis for the Hebrew University academic
leadership in Israel and in the Jewish world for many years to come.