---

4181

 

ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY

(1925)

 

Historians have told us that our small nation withstood the destruction of its independence as a State only because it began to transfer in its estimation of values the highest rank to its spiritual possessions, to its religion and its literature.

   We are now living in a time when this people has a prospect of again winning the land of its fathers with the help of a Power that dominates the world, and it celebrates the occasion by the foundation of a University in its ancient capital city.

   A University is a place in which knowledge is taught above all differences of religions and of nations, where investigation is carried on, which is to show mankind how far they understand the world around them and how far they can control it.

   Such an undertaking is a noble witness to the development to which our people has forced its way in two thousand years of unhappy fortune.

   I find it painful that my ill-health prevents me from being present at the opening festivities of the Jewish University in Jerusalem.