Tel Aviv University
Aim
Attract the brightest minds from across the country and around the globe; be one of Israel's most important research centres; help to shape Israel's social future, opening the doors of knowledge and opportunity to all.
History
Tel Aviv University came into being through the dedicated efforts of visionaries who foresaw the need for an additional university in Israel's rapidly growing central region. In the 1930s, the idea was promoted by then mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff, with whose encouragement two post-secondary education facilities were opened during the British Mandate period: The Biological-Pedagogical Institute and the School of Law and Economics. After the establishment of the State, Haim Levanon, Deputy Mayor of Tel Aviv in the early 1950s and mayor from 1953-59, energetically campaigned for the founding of a second Israeli university, to be located in Tel Aviv. The idea was eventually realised on August 16, 1953, when the Municipal Council of Tel Aviv-Jaffa decided to transform the Biological-Pedagogical Institute into the Academic Institute of Natural Sciences, under the leadership of Prof. Heinrich Mendelssohn, which would “form the core of a future university.” It was located at the Abu Kabir campus in southern Tel Aviv, and had 24 students in its first year.
IRD Activities
- A Pan-Abrahamic Dialogue, Annual Cambridge-TAU International Interreligious Conferences
Tel Aviv and Cambridge Universities have embarked on a bold initiative of transforming the study of - and understandings between – the three Abrahamic faiths. Adherents of the Abrahamic faiths account for over half of the world's population, yet Judaism, Christianity and Islam share uneasy pasts, conflicting versions of history and clashing paradigms of truth, revelation, and redemption. The conferences bring together experts from around the world to discuss some of the most pressing and fascinating dimensions of religious violence. The TAU-Cambridge interreligious approach is intended to enrich, not undermine, the role of Jewish or Islamic or Christian Studies, or Comparative Religion, as separate disciplines. The idea is that researchers from these departments will study and teach the faiths shoulder-to-shoulder. To study the religions interreligiously is to better understand those particular formations by not only comparing the three faiths, but by attending carefully to the way in which they engaged and interacted with each other at every level
- Religious Studies Program
The religious studies programme is an inter-disciplinary programme designed for M.A. students, which includes a comparative study of the world religions- Christianity, Islam, Judaism, the religions of Asia, ancient world religions and New age Religions. The programme includes collaborations with other disciplines, which are not necessarily part of the faculty of humanities at the University, for instance the social sciences, the natural sciences and the arts. In additions, the programme aspires to encourage the existence and development of an equal and pluralistic, as well as critical, inter religious dialogue, and also to make it possible for people coming from different areas and professions, to deepen their knowledge and understanding in the subject of religious studies, by supplying them with an access to a wider knowledge concerning the field, as well as instruments for critical thinking and analysing.
- Hillel
the Foundation for Jewish Life on Campus: a student-run organization that provides a variety of programming on college campuses around the world. Throughout the school year, TAU Hillel offers events in English and Hebrew that are open to all regardless of religion or nationality
Main Focus Countries of Activities
Tel Aviv, Israel - Tel Aviv, Israel - World -