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arishansky, raphael
the country. The campus includes 63 buildings, 165 classrooms,
130 laboratories, and 25 libraries. It employs 1,650 academic
staff, teaching in six faculties and 38 academic departments:
exact sciences, natural sciences, social sciences, humanities,
Jewish studies, and law. The campus also includes schools of
education, social work, engineering, and business administration.
In 2005 Bar-Ilan had 31,200 students and 59,000 alumni.
Its annual budget was $130 million.
Bar-Ilan is the only Israeli university where all students
benefit from a compulsory enrichment program in Jewish
heritage (Bible, Jewish literature and history, ethics, culture,
etc.), in addition to the full university curriculum. The university
offers over 500 elective courses in Basic Jewish Studies.
Degrees offered by Bar-Ilan’s academic departments include:
B.A., B.Sc., LL.B., M.A., M.Sc., M.S.W., LL.M., M.B.A.,
and Ph.D.; diplomas in communications, local government,
music therapy, teaching, translation and interpreting. It has
also taken a leading role in applied scientific research in the
biomedical and pharmaceutical fields, and houses several
national scientific centers, such as the Israel National Center
for Magnetic Measurements. The university also houses highlevel
research centers in the fields of physics, medical chemistry,
mathematics, brain research, economics, strategic studies,
psychology, music, archaeology, and Jewish philosophy and
law. Unique to Bar-Ilan are the Institute for Advanced Torah
Studies and the counterpart Midrasha for Women, through
which over 1,300 students combine intensive yeshivah-style
studies with a full academic curriculum.
Bar-Ilan maintains academic cooperation agreements
with 54 leading universities around the world. There are 64
endowed chairs and 66 research centers operating at the university,
including several leading research institutes in physics,
medical chemistry, mathematics, brain research, economics,
strategic studies, developmental psychology, musicology,
Bible, Talmud, Jewish education, Jewish law and philosophy. A
special project of the university is the publication of responsa
texts, historical and present, with special computer applications
developed for this purpose. Bar-Ilan University Press
published to the mid-1990s some 350 publications in addition
to 20 periodicals and professional journals. The university
owns the Bar-Ilan Research & Development Company aimed
at marketing research results to private companies. The university
sponsors many social and community outreach projects,
including a prisoner rehabilitation effort, a big-brother
program, legal aid, study programs for senior citizens, educational
counseling, and a network of social counselors in development
towns.
Bibliography: Ben-Yosef, in: Sefer ha-Shanah shel Bar-Ilan,
4–5 (1967), 12–29. Website: www.biu.ac.il.
[David M. Weinberg / Shaked Gilboa (2nd ed.)]
BARISHANSKY, RAPHAEL (1864–1950), rabbi. Barishansky
was born in Lipnishtok, Lithuania, and studied at the outstanding
yeshivot of Eishishok and Mir as well as the kolel in
Kovno and with the Gaon Rabbi Ḥayyim Lev. In Bialystok he
studied with Rabbi Samuel *Mohilewer. Mohilwer influenced
him to become a religious Zionist and Barishansky joined Hovovei
Zion (see *Ḥibbat Zion).
For 30 years, beginning in 1893, Barishansky was the pulpit
rabbi in a large congregation in the town of Gomel in Belorussia,
even attracting non-observant Jews to Judaism. He
worked to help Jewish soldiers in the Russian Army by sending
them kosher food and ritual items for Jewish holidays.
Barishansky was a committed religious Zionist who
sought to bring others to the cause; he attended several World
Zionist Congresses. Barishansky’s Zionism also brought him
into conflict with the fairly large community of Lubavitcher
Ḥasidim in Gomel. When *Mizrachi opened a chapter in
Gomel, and there was community opposition, Barishansky
vigorously defended the ideology of religious Zionism.
In the early 1920s, Barishansky publicly criticized Jewish
communists for closing Jewish schools and discrediting
Zionism. As a result, he was sentenced to two years in prison,
but was released after six months, thanks to the intervention
of several Zionists. By February 1924, he had fled Russia and
arrived in New York. Because of his experiences in the “old
country,” when the American Jewish community wanted to
ameliorate the conditions of the Jews in Soviet territories, he
opposed attempts to keep them there, because even the Jewish
communists were anti-religious and were suppressing Judaism,
especially around the Jewish holy days.
Once in New York, Barishansky accepted a teaching
position at the Talmud Torah Torat Moshe in the Bronx.
He became an active member in the American Mizrachi
movement and a member of the Agudat Harabbonim, but
left when he disagreed with their policy of denying the certification
of kosher meat in factories that also produced nonkosher
meat. In 1926 he was a rabbi in Washington, D.C.
When he retired in 1929, he returned to the Bronx. An autobiographical
memoir of the trial in Russia in 1922 appeared
in the Morgen Journal (Nov. 19, 1923) and was reprinted in
M. Altshuler, “The Rabbi of Homel’s Trial,” in: Michael, 6
(1980), pp. 9–61.
Bibliography: M. Sherman, Orthodox Judaism in America:
A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook, (1996) 26–27; A. Rand
(ed.), Toledot Anshei Shem (1950), 7; Jewish Daily Bulletin (Oct. 27,
1925)
[Jeanette Friedman (2nd ed.)]
BARIT, JACOB (1797–1883), Russian talmudist and communal
leader. Born in Simno, Suvalki province, he left in 1822
for Vilna, where he kept a distillery. Attracted by the ideas of
the *Haskalah, he studied foreign languages, mathematics,
and astronomy. In 1850 he became principal of the yeshivah
founded by R. Ḥayyim Naḥman Parnas, a position he held for
25 years. By the end of 1840 he was the acknowledged leader
of the Vilna community. When Sir Moses *Montefiore visited
Vilna in 1846 Barit advised him on his petition to Nicholas I.
He was a member of the delegation sent to St. Petersburg in
1852 in connection with the oppressive new conscription law.
154 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3