STN I World
DON COHEN
Special to the Jewish News
I
f the State of Israel is a Jewish
miracle, then Israel's Bar-Ilan
University is a Detroit Jewish
miracle.
BIU would not be celebrating its
jubilee year as Israel's largest and
fastest-growing university if not for
Detroiters back in 1955 deter-
mined to establish a world-
class institution that would
strengthen Israel, Judaism and
Jewish life by bringing Torah
and a religiously observant lifestyle
into harmony with modern science
and scholarship.
A June 1994 tribute in the U.S.
Senate marking Phillip Stollman's
90th birthday introduced by Sen. Carl
Levin said: "In Detroit, the names
Stollman and Bar-Ilan University are
synonymous." And that is certainly
the way Dr. Gerald and Leila Stollman
of West Bloomfield understand it.
They maintain a family tradition that
took them back to the university last
June to celebrate its 50th anniversary.
Jerry Stollman, son of Phillip and
Bernice, recalls that a few days after
his June 21, 1951, bar mitzvah, many
of his guests gathered at the Detroit
home of Abraham and Laura
Nusbaum for the first parlor meeting
to raise funds for the university. The
Nusbaum home was a frequent gath-
ering site to support Jewish causes.
"They renovated the lower level of
our house and all kinds of meetings
took place there. My dad could bring
home 12 people without any notice
and my mom could take care of it,"
says their daughter, Fran (Nusbaum)
Fetter of Bloomfield Hills.
"The university was a dream of my
father-in-law," Joe Fetter says of Abe
Nusbaum, who later became chair of
the Detroit and Michigan committees
for Bar-Ilan before his death in 1957.
"He was obsessed with creating the
university. He'd spend a good part of
his week working on it and be on the
phone in the evening.
"He felt the new country had an
important purpose and needed to steer
the youth in the right direction. He
The Nagel Jewish
Heritage Building houses
the largest center of Jewish
Studies in the world as
well as a synagogue.
had a love of Jewish studies and felt
that they needed an institution of
higher learning."
Descendants of both the Nusbaum
and Stollman families are co-chairing
Bar-Ilan University's Sept. 18 Jubilee
Reunion Gala at Congregation
Shaarey Zedek in Southfield.
A Dream Begins
ON THE
COVER
Among those guests in the
Nusbaum basement was Rabbi
Pinkhos Churgin, a scholar of
Semitics, professor of Jewish
history and literature at Yeshiva
University in New York and a national
leader of the Mizrachi Religious
Zionists of America. The rabbi worked
closely with Phil Stollman, who was
president of Detroit Mizrachi, and his
brother Max and sister-in law Frieda.
Rabbi Churgin planted the idea for
this special university at a Mizrachi
convention in Atlantic City in 1950.
"Rabbi Churgin took a walk with
dad," says Jerry, "and presented him
with an idea of having a university in
Israel that would give both a religious
and secular education." It was to be
the first American-sponsored and
American-patterned university, and its
first faculty was drawn largely from
American Jewish educators.
The idea behind Bar-Ilan University
was novel, just like .the Mizrachi
movement. All other Orthodox move-
ments opposed Zionism, while much
of the largely secular Zionist move-
ment wanted a modern nation-state of
Israel in order to turn Jews into
Israelis.
Rabbi Churgin's vision was to bring
observant and secular Israeli Jews
together and provide a broad educa-
tion beyond what they would receive
in their own communities. The idea
was that a common meeting ground
would unify Jews while encouraging
the observant to contribute to meeting
the secular needs of state-building and
for the secular to get an appreciation
of their Jewish heritage.
Jerry Stollman remembers that
Rabbi Churgin designed the universi-
Below: The Joseph and Frances Fetter Brain Research
Complex, below, at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan
comprises the entire second floor of the Gonda
Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center.
LEGACY on page 62
Israel's largest university
grows from Detroit roots.
8/25
2005
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