How Bar-Ilan University plans to use Its $260 Million donation for growth and tradition - opinion

The news out of Bar-Ilan University last month was very exciting. It had received the largest donation in its history – $260 million – the second-largest ever to an Israeli academic institution. Now comes the big decisions about how to best utilize this gift by an anonymous donor. As a long-time faculty member, here are my thoughts and hopes.

BIU was founded with a unique mission within Israeli society. As explained on the university website: “The university emblem incorporates the Torah and a microscope, symbolizing the integration of Jewish heritage and science.” The importance of connecting students to Judaism and Zionism, while simultaneously providing a first-class academic education, is as relevant, if not more so, today as it was at the founding of the institution in 1955.

The university is now confronted with the monumental decision of how to divide the money among the many competing interests while hewing to the founders’ vision.

Expansion is key

The bulk of the funds will certainly go, as noted in the initial press releases, to expanding the university’s already impressive prowess in the natural sciences – fields that require a great deal of financial investment for talented researchers and sophisticated equipment. 

I look forward to seeing BIU’s success in those fields grow even more, including in the brain science program, my home department. But I assume and hope that a reasonable percentage of the money will also be allocated to further BIU’s other objectives.

As noted on its home page, “The university strives for scientific and intellectual excellence, intertwined with the values of Jewish tradition and the heritage of Israel.” It is reasonable to assume that a Jewish American donor who chooses to support Bar-Ilan University does so at least in part as an expression of identification with these clearly articulated values. 

On the BIU website there is a page titled: “Why give to Bar-Ilan?” that highlights “...a world-renowned Faculty of Jewish Studies… we take as a central intellectual mission the promotion of Jewish culture and tradition through academic study… mandatory core curriculum in Basic Jewish Studies… advanced Torah learning.”

The Bar-Ilan University mission is actualized in a range of ways. In conversations with other faculty and students, we have identified three broad avenues through which these ideals can be advanced.

The most basic is to support academic Jewish studies and maintain excellence where it already exists. BIU’s Judaic studies departments (e.g. Talmud, Bible, Jewish Philosophy) are among the best in the world and its Judaic library is top-rated. 

While improving other areas, it would be a shame to allow those that are already top-notch to decline. The cost of these programs is small compared to the hard sciences. BIU also has an excellent Faculty of Education, which combined with other BIU resources could train Judaic studies teachers, including for the state school system where there are reports of a declining level of Jewish studies.  

Combining Jewish and scientific studies

The next level with respect to Jewish academia is combining Jewish studies with modern methodologies and technologies. BIU is at the forefront of collaborations between data science and Judaic studies, including Bible, Talmud, Hebrew literature, archaeology, and Jewish philosophy. The potential is boundless, but this sort of collaboration is not inexpensive.

Today’s religious and spiritual leaders require an understanding of the intricacies of physics, biology, psychology, and other disciplines as they confront halachic and spiritual questions. For almost two decades, BIU had a unique, advanced-degree program that combined science and Judaism. The men and women who studied in this program were from diverse backgrounds and now utilize and disseminate their new knowledge and approaches to broad audiences.

It was a first-rate, rigorous academic program. It also produced unique spin-offs such as the “Jewish calendar” seminar, in which a group of eclectic individuals meet periodically to discuss the mathematical, astronomical, halachic, and historical aspects of the remarkable Jewish calendar. 

This program can now be relaunched, potentially with an additional component of a research center. This center could be housed in BIU’s existing advanced centers of Torah, the kollel and midrasha, and can serve as a hub for the study of technology and halachic questions as they relate to, for example, smart houses, cultivated meat, hydroponics, agriculture, genetic engineering, the ritual slaughter of animals, space travel, and other new issues as they arise. Bar-Ilan University could assemble a unique team of cross-disciplinary experts who could fill a crucial lacuna in the complex modern world. 

Thirdly, BIU has always been a university with a Jewish character. For example, just as university students in the US are required to study “Western Civilization” and classic literature to better understand their foundational culture, students at BIU have been privileged to take foundational courses across a wide range of disciplines related to Judaism and Zionism. Students have relayed to me over the years that they found these courses interesting and enjoyable.

In recent years the number of required core courses and the selection has decreased, ostensibly due to fiscal considerations. BIU now has an opportunity to resolve that problem.

Jewish student life could also be enhanced, for example, by encouraging and supporting one of Bar-Ilan’s greatest assets, the long-serving campus rabbi whose office provides a host of Jewish activities and functions.  

As BIU’s reputation grows – and this donation will hopefully contribute to that – international scholars will be drawn to its campus. As Jews in the US, UK, France, and elsewhere are considering aliyah, BIU should place an emphasis on attracting leading Jewish scholars from around the world. 

This is a sampling of suggestions for the use of a reasonable percentage of the mega-donation to further BIU’s mission of blending Jewish tradition with modern scholarship and technologies. As clearly stated in section 2 of the BIU articles of association (takanon): “The goal of BIU is the furtherance of teaching and research in all areas of Torah and science in the spirit of the Torah and traditions of Israel.”

There are likely other, even better ideas, of how to further this mission, ideas that a committee to assess the optimal use of the money can suggest.

Cultivating the donor relationship 

WHILE THE news of this donation came as an unexpected pleasant surprise to the BIU community and the general public, it is likely the result of decades of hard work. It is to the credit of the BIU fundraisers in the US and the Israeli BIU administrations, past and present, that they likely developed a meaningful, long-term relationship with the donor and must have bonded over shared values for the Jewish future that inspired such a donation.

Future potential donors, and certainly potential mega-donors, will likely be watching how Bar-Ilan University handles this mega-donation in terms of transparency of who makes the decisions. Will there be a committee? Will it include academics? Others? How will the decisions be made for the utilization of the $260 million gift and how will it be used to further the BIU missions?

The donor put his trust in Bar-Ilan University and its leadership and chose to leave his money to BIU over the other great universities in Israel and around the world. 

I don’t know the details, but I can only surmise that at least part of the reason is because he recognized that the modern State of Israel requires cutting-edge science in conjunction with Bar-Ilan University’s unique mission as described above, and identified with that mission.

I am confident that the BIU administration will have this mission in front of them as they make decisions regarding the use of this very generous donation.

The writer is a professor and director of the bachelor’s program in neuroscience at Bar-Ilan University.