A Jewish University

Martin Buber

Chaim Weizmann

Bertold Feiwel

1902

The purpose of the Jewish University is to offer Jewish youth the opportunity to obtain an education:

In the general higher disciplines with special consideration given to the Wissenschaft des Judentums (“Science of Judaism”)

In technical subjects

Possible locations for the Jewish University are:

  1. A site in Palestine
  2. ʺ ʺ in England
  3. ʺ ʺ in Switzerland

An effort should be made to establish the Jewish University in Palestine—for reasons that are self-evident to any national Jew. Apart from the eminent national-cultural significance of having a university in Palestine, a significant advantage would be that a university could become a center for the technical development of the country.

Should it be impossible to establish a modern university in Palestine, alternative countries would be England and Switzerland. In both cases the governments would not create obstacles.

The organization of the university is conceptualized as follows:

  1. General, philosophical, political, pedagogical, and Jewish studies faculty.

  2. A mathematical-scientific faculty, to which is attached a school to train teachers in these subjects.

    Note: Both faculties will also function as a teachers’ college.

  3. A design school for architects.
  4. An engineering school for engineers in road, railway, waterway, and bridge construction.
  5. A mechanical-technical school for the training of mechanical and electrical engineers.
  6. A chemical-technical school.
  7. A silvicultural and agricultural school for the training of foresters, farmers, and agricultural engineers.

The proposed university thus will combine a university (based on the German and Swiss model) and a technology institute.

(Such a combination is found at the University of Brussels.)

A medical faculty is not being considered in this proposal. It is very expensive to establish clinics, and communal or state hospitals would most likely be unavailable to our faculty.

Students of medicine would, however, be able to undertake their basic science training in four or five semesters in our science departments (in chemistry, physics, zoology, botany, anatomy, physiology, and so on).

(Similar models exist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and at the University of Neuchâtel, both of which do not have medical faculties.)

The proposed combination is also favorable from a financial point of view.

The following estimate was developed on the basis of the Institutes of Technology in Zurich and Darmstadt but with consideration given to the special organization of the Jewish University:

 

Main Building

Cost of construction, including heating, ventilation, water pipes, etc.2,929,700 marks
Electric lighting       44,000
Teaching materials and equipment  500,000
Furniture, etc.          150,000
Unexpected expenses      50,000
Total            3,673,700

Note: The main building in Darmstadt cost 2,568,000 marks; the main building in Zurich cost 3,898,000 francs.

Darmstadt spent very little on teaching materials when it founded the new institute because it could use the teaching materials of the old institute as well as its library.

 

Buildings for Electrical Engineering and Physics

Cost of construction335,000 marks
Interior          200,000
Unexpected expenses50,000
Total  585,000

 

Chemical Institute

Cost of construction      345,000 marks
Electric lighting25,000
Interior 
A. Pure chemistry50,000
B. Technical chemistry 90,000
C. Pharmacology5,000
General50,000
Total                565,000
Electrical center, boiler room, mechanical center300,000
Building site350,000
Total 650,000

Total cost of the university: 5,473,000 marks

Note: The total cost of the Institute in Zurich: 5,850,000 francs, not counting the cost for the interior facilities of the main building, which amounted to about 1 million francs. (The data about the cost for the interior facility of an institute of technology was taken from the Berichte des Bayerischen Kultusministeriums [reports of the Bavarian ministry of culture] about the University of Nürnberg.

Total cost for the Institute in Darmstadt: 6,079,790 marks.
The facilities of the Jewish University are calculated for 1,500 students.
Enrollment at the Institute in Zürich is 1,007.
Enrollment at the Institute in Darmstadt is 1,512.

The data regarding enrollment are for the academic year 1901/02 and are taken from the official reports of the institutes.

Expenses

a. Officers and administration120,000
b. salaries for teachers450,000
c. collection and scientific events150,000
Maintaining the furniture10,000
Unexpected expenses5,000
Total 735,000 marks

Income

Tuition and fees100,000

Therefore an annual subsidy of 635,000 marks will be necessary.

Note: For the purpose of comparison, the numbers or the annual budgets of several universities are given here:

 BudgetIncomeExpenses
Heidelberg926,000?309,000
Freiburg im Breisgau766,000?262,000
Karlsruhe569,000?192,000
Darmstadt 345,000581,000
Zurich 675,000643,000
560,000  

Staff

60 salaried professors
25 assistant teachers and assistants
50 private docents [unsalaried professors]
20 administrators

The present proposal is calculated for a university that can meet the highest demands for a modern institution of higher learning. This proposal is modeled on universities designed on a grand scale: the institutes in Zurich and Darmstadt and the University of Freiburg in Breisgau.

 

Translated by

Susanne 
Klingenstein

.

 

Credits

Martin Buber, Chaim Weizmann, and Berthold Feiwel, Eine Jüdische Hochschule [A Jewish University] (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1902), pp. 31–35.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

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Creator Bio

Martin Buber

1878–1965

Martin Buber was one of the best-known Jewish thinkers in the Western world in the twentieth century. His neoromanticism and use of völkisch terms of analysis in his early writings exerted an enormous influence on Jewish youth in Central Europe, as did his popular (and frequently unreliable) accounts of Hasidic teachings. Perhaps more than any individual he was responsible for introducing Hasidism to Western-educated Jewish audiences. In 1923, he published his best-known philosophical work, I and Thou. In 1938, he moved to Jerusalem, where he was given a chair at the Hebrew University. Before 1948, he was among those in the Yishuv (mainly German-speaking, Central European intellectuals) who advocated a binational state in which Jews and Arabs would cooperate. After World War II, he was much lauded, both in Europe and America, as a great humanitarian.

Creator Bio

Chaim Weizmann

1874–1952
The Zionist leader and chemist Chaim Weizmann was born to an observant Jewish family in Motol, Russian Empire (now in Belarus). He studied at universities in Berlin and Switzerland, receiving a doctorate in chemistry. In 1904, Weizmann moved to England to teach chemistry at the University of Manchester and from 1905 to 1908 worked for the Clayton Aniline Company, also in Manchester. Weizmann is credited with ensuring British support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland through the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Throughout his service as a leading figure in the Zionist movement, Weizmann pursued a scientific career and devoted himself to the establishment of a scientific research institute in Mandatory Palestine. In 1949, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot (formerly the Daniel Sieff Institute) was renamed in his honor. He worked to gain support for a Jewish state from the United States as well as the United Nations. From 1920 to 1931 and 1935 to 1946 Weizmann served as president of the World Zionist Organization. He was elected president of the state of Israel in 1949, and he served in this role until his death.

Creator Bio

Bertold Feiwel

Born in Pohrlitz, Austria-Hungary (today Pohořelice, Czech Republic), Berthold Feiwel was raised in a German-speaking Austrian Jewish family. While studying at universities in Zurich and Vienna (1893–1897), Feiwel, who became a disciple of Theodore Herzl, was an organizer of the First Zionist World Congress and editor of the newly reconstituted Zionist movement’s German-language newspaper Die Welt. At the turn of the century, Feiwel was one of a circle of young intellectuals within the Zionist movement who criticized Herzl’s narrowly political-diplomatic focus and his avoidance of larger cultural questions for fear of angering Orthodox supporters. Instead, Feiwel and others like Martin Buber in this “Democratic Fraction” called for an expansive Zionist program of national cultural revival, meaning both large-scale institutional support for Jewish national creativity in arts and letters and a programmatic effort to instill a Jewish national identity and culture in assimilated Western Jews. With Martin Buber, Feiwel cofounded a publishing house, the Jüdischer Verlag, which focused on furthering these ends by familiarizing assimilated German Jews with modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature and with East European Jewish life and culture more generally. Feiwel focused his own work as a writer and editor on the same goals—perhaps most notably in his German translations of Morris Rosenfeld’s Yiddish poems, Lieder des Ghetto (1902, 1920), illustrated by Ephraim Moses Lilien. After World War I, he worked for Keren Hayesod and the Jewish Colonial Trust, settling in Jerusalem in 1933.

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