January 7, 2005

Prophet or Dreamer?

By HAIM WATZMAN

A biography ponders a university president's efforts to get the Jews and Arabs of Palestine to live together in peace

Rabbi Judah Leib Magnes, first president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, believed that he was upholding the universal morality of the Hebrew prophets when he advocated a binational state in British-ruled Palestine. Through the minuscule peace movement he led until his death, in 1948 -- a few months after Israel declared its independence -- he thought he

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