page_title: Meir Bar-Ilan
section_title: Life in Israel
hierarchical_section_title: Meir Bar-Ilan / Biography / Life in Israel
caption_attribution_description: עברית: הרב מאיר בר אילן
context_page_description: Meir Bar-Ilan was an
  Orthodox rabbi, author, and Religious Zionist activist, who served as leader of the Mizrachi movement in the United States and Mandatory Palestine. Bar-Ilan University, founded in 1955, was named in his honour.
context_section_description: In 1923 he moved to Jerusalem. In Israel, Bar-Ilan founded the daily newspaper Hatzofeh and initiated the Encyclopedia Talmudit, a Hebrew encyclopedia summarizing halachic topics in the Talmud, forty-two volumes of which have been published to date. Bar-Ilan also served on the board of directors of the Mizrachi Bank and, in 1925, became a member of the Board of Directors of the Jewish National Fund, devoted to financing the rebuilding of the Jewish homeland in the then-British Mandate of Palestine.
  He was a vocal opponent of the 1937 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and the 1939 British White Paper, and advocated civil disobedience and non-cooperation by the Jews with the British.
  At the beginning of 1943, Bar-Ilan visited the United States to lobby the American government to rescue Jewish refugees and help establish a Jewish state. He secured meetings with leading politicians and foreign ambassadors, including Vice President Henry Wallace, Senator Robert Wagner, Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley, and House Minority Leader Joseph Martin.
caption: Meir Bar-Ilan 1938
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