Judah Leon Magnes (Hebrew: ‫ ;יהודה לייב מאגנס‬July 5, 1877 – October 27, 1948) was a

prominent Reform rabbi in both the United States and Mandatory Palestine. He is best
remembered as a leader in the pacifist movement of the World War I period, his advocacy
of a binational Jewish-Arab state in Palestine, and as one of the most widely recognized
voices of 20th century American Reform Judaism. Magnes served as the first chancellor of
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1925), and later as its President (1935–1948).

Biography
Magnes was born in San Francisco to David and Sophie (Abrahamson) who named him
Julian. He changed his name to Judah as a young man.[1] [2] As a young boy, Magnes's
family moved to Oakland, California, where he attended Sabbath school at First Hebrew
Congregation, and was taught by Ray Frank, the first Jewish woman to preach formally from
a pulpit in the United States.[3]

Magnes's views of the Jewish people was strongly influenced by First Hebrew's Rabbi Levy,
[4] and it was at First Hebrew's building on 13th and Clay that Magnes first began preaching.
His bar mitzvah speech of 1890 was quoted at length in the Oakland Tribune.[5]

Magnes graduated from Oakland High School as a valedictorian in 1894.[6] He then studied
at the University of Cincinnati, where he gained a degree of notoriety in a campaign against
censorship of the "Class annual" of 1898 by the university faculty.[7] He graduated from the
University of Cincinnati with an A.B. in 1898. He also attended rabbinical seminary at
Hebrew Union College, and was ordained a rabbi in June 1900. He then went to study in
Germany. He studied Judaism at the Berlin Jewish College, Lehranstalt, and pursued his
doctoral studies at Berlin University, where he studied under Friedrich Paulsen and Friedrich
Delitzsch, and at the University of Heidelberg. It was while he was in Berlin that he became
an ardent Zionist. He spent time traveling through Eastern Europe, and visited Jewish
communities in Germany, Poland, and Galicia. In December 1902, he received a PhD in
Philosophy from the University of Heidelberg, and returned to the United States in 1903.[8]
[9]

On October 19, 1908, Magnes married Beatrice Lowenstein of New York,[2] who happened
to be Louis Marshall's sister-in-law.[10]

New York
In America, he spent most of his professional life in New York City, where he helped found
the American Jewish Committee in 1906. Magnes was also one of the most influential forces
behind the organization of the Jewish community in the city, serving as president
throughout its existence from 1908 to 1922. The Kehillah oversaw aspects of Jewish culture,
religion, education and labor issues, in addition to helping to integrate America's German
and East European Jewish communities. He was also the president of the Society for the
Advancement of Judaism from 1912 to 1920.

The religious views Magnes extolled as a Reform rabbi were not at all within the
mainstream. Magnes favored a more traditional approach to Judaism, fearing the overly
assimilationist tendencies of his peers. Magnes delivered a Passover sermon in 1910 at
Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York in which he advocated changes in the
Reform ritual to incorporate elements of traditional Judaism, expressing his concern that
younger members of the congregation were driven to seek spirituality in other religions that
cannot be obtained at Congregation Emanu-El. He advocated for restoration of the Bar
Mitzvah ceremony and criticized the Union Prayer Book, advocating for a return to the
traditional prayer book.[11] The disagreement over this issue led him to resign from
Congregation Emanu-El that year. From 1911–12 he was Rabbi of the Conservative
Congregation B'nai Jeshurun.

The Kehillah
In New York he set himself the task of uniting the Jewish communities. In 1880 the city
contained around 50,000 Jews mostly of German origin. By 1900 there were nearly a million
Jews, most coming from what is now Poland, Hungary, Romania, Belarus and Ukraine,
making it the largest Jewish population in the world. On 11 October 1908 he was chairman
of a conference of Jewish organisations. The invitations to which, in English and Yiddish, had
also been signed by labour leader Joseph Barondess and Judge Otto A. Rosalsky, amongst
others. The conference authorised the formation of a representative community, the
Kehillah, and gave Magnes the power to appoint an executive committee. The 25 man
committee included Professor Solomon Schechter and Joseph Silverman. They called a
convention in February 1909 to form a constituent assembly. Two hundred and twenty-two
organisations responded, including 74 synagogues and 42 mutual benefit societies, out of
some 3,500 Jewish organisations existing in the city at the time. The Kehillah's aim was to
be:

to wipe out invidious distinctions between East European and West European, foreigner and
native, Uptown and Downtown Jew, rich and poor; and make us realize that the Jews are
one people with a common history and with common hopes.[12]

The committee proceeded to set up a series of boards, or bureaus: Education (1910), Social
Morals (1912); Industry (1914); and Philanthropic Research (1916). The first secretary of the
Bureau of Education was Henrietta Szold. A report by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan revealed that
of some 200,000 Jewish children of school age no more than 50,000 received any form of
Jewish education. By 1916 the Bureau directed or supervised 200 schools, 600 teachers and
35,000 pupils. Funding was dependent on wealthy New York Jews such as Jacob Schiff, Felix
Warburg and Louis Marshall who made an endowment for girls' education. The Bureau
eventually evolved into the Jewish Education Committee of New York.[13] Magnes was also
closely involved with the Social Morals Bureau which held investigations into the white-
slave-traffic and the Jewish underworld. Its work is held responsible of reducing Jewish
juvenile delinquency from 30% of the New York total to 14% twenty years later.[14] In the
Bureau of Industry he was Chairman of the Conference of the Furriers Trade.[15]

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

At the end of 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, Magnes became involved in
collecting funds for the Jewish population in Palestine. The following year a greater crisis
arose with the war on the Eastern Front devastating the Jews of the Pale of Settlement.
Magnes devoted all his energies to this issue. Firstly he set about coordinating the three
bodies that had been set up to face the catastrophe. These were the American Jewish Relief
Committee, associated with the Kehillah and the American Jewish Committee, the Central
Relief Committee from the Orthodox community, and the People's Relief Committee set up
by labour organisations. The result was the creation of a single body called the American
Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. In December 1915 a fund-raising effort was launched
at the Carnegie Hall, at which he delivered an emotional appeal which raised a million
dollars in donations.[16] By the end of 1915 around five million dollars had been raised.[17]
In the spring of 1916 Magnes visited Germany and Poland to organise the distribution of the
funds. The visit, via Scandinavia, started in Hamburg and Berlin, from there, with the
assistance of the German authorities, he visited Poland and Vilna. He had to overcome the
suspicions of the Zionist leadership in Europe who suspected him of bias. Despite this he
was able to organise the distribution of funds bridging the gulf between the Central and
Eastern European Jewish communities. Amongst the leaders he met were Max Warburg,
head of the German Jewish Society (Hilfsverein), and Rabbi Leo Baeck, then Jewish Chaplain
in the German Army. He returned to America in the winter of 1916 and launched a fresh
relief appeal to raise ten million dollars. At one meeting he was again able to raise a million
dollars in donations and pledges in a single evening.[18] With President Wilson's decision to
enter the war he switched his attention to anti-war campaigning.[19]

Pacifism and the anti-war movement

Magnes was a Pacifist activist. According to Israeli professor Aryeh Goren, he considered
himself a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and the prophet Jeremiah, and opposed all forms of
nationalism by military force. He had developed Pacifist views in 1898 as a result of the
Spanish–American War. Magnes believed it to be an "unrighteous" war. Following the
assassination of President William McKinley, who had led the United States into war with
Spain, by an anarchist activist, Magnes wrote to his parents from Europe that he was not
"enraged at the anarchists for it at all. In my opinion, dishonest men in public office are
greater anarchists than those who kill a president once in twenty years".[20]
Following the United States' entry into the war in Europe in the spring of 1917, Magnes
switched all his attention to campaigning against it. He became one of the movement's high-
profile leaders. Like most of its leaders his sympathies were with the working classes. People
such Eugene Debs who was sentenced to ten years in prison for his activities; Norman
Thomas; Roger Nash Baldwin; Scott Nearing; Morris Hillquit, who took 22% of the vote in
New York's Mayoral elections on an anti-war platform; and Oswald Garrison Villard. Most of
these men were involved in what became the People's Council of America for Democracy
and Peace with Magnes its first chairman. On 30 May 1917 he gave the keynote address to a
mass meeting of fifteen thousand people in the Madison Square Gardens. A follow-up
meeting in Minneapolis was banned and hastily re-convened in Chicago but with a military
force threatening to break it up.[21] Magnes moved home in Connecticut because of
hostility from his neighbours and was interviewed by an agent from the Department of
Justice. One of his colleagues from the "Joint", B. D. Bogen, was questioned by the Attorney
General about Magnes' activities. Magnes worked with the newly formed Civil Liberties
Bureau which defended pacifists and conscientious objectors. In America more than 2,000
prosecutions were brought against war-resisters under the Conscription Act or the
Espionage Act; Magnes avoided prosecution since he was over conscription age.[22]

Despite coming from a wealthy background—by 1920 he had become financially

independent—Magnes reacted to the Russian Revolution with enthusiasm; in 1921 he was
the spokesman at Philadelphia for the Society for Medical Relief to Soviet Russia. He also
spoke on behalf of the Italians Sacco and Vanzetti.[23]

Palestine
Magnes first visited Ottoman Palestine in 1907, growing a beard in solidarity with the Jewish
colonists. At Jaffa he was told of the plans for a Jewish-only town, north of Jaffa, to be called
Tel Aviv. He was sceptical that it would ever come about. He made an extensive tour of the
region, travelling on horseback and camping at night. The tour included reaching the
summit of Mount Hermon. He returned to America by way of the seventh Zionist Congress
in The Hague. His wife accompanied him on his second visit in 1912. They stayed in
Jerusalem where there was some discussion of establishing a Hebrew University. They also
visited Merhavia and Degania in the Galilee.[24]

Magnes agreed, however, with the overall anti-Zionist attitudes of Reform Judaism at the
time; he strongly disapproved of nationalistic aspects within Judaism, which Zionism
represented and supported. To him, Jews living in the Diaspora and Jews living in Palestine
were of equal significance to Judaism and Jewish culture; he agreed that a renewed Jewish
community in Eretz Israel would enhance Jewish life within the Diaspora. Magnes emigrated
to Mandate Palestine in 1922 and maintained that emigration to Eretz Israel was a matter of
individual choice; it did not reflect any kind of "negation of the Diaspora", or support for
Zionism. He thought that the land of Israel should be built in a "decent manner", or not built
at all.

In both America and Palestine, Magnes played a key role in founding the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem in 1918 along with Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann. However, the three
did not get along, and when, in 1928, Magnes, who was initially responsible only for the
university's finances and administrative staff, had his authority extended to academic and
professional matters, Einstein resigned from the Board of Governors. Einstein wrote:

The bad thing about the business was that the good Felix Warburg, thanks to his financial
authority ensured that the incapable Magnes was made director of the Institute, a failed
American rabbi, who, through his dilettantish enterprises had become uncomfortable to his
family in America, who very much hoped to dispatch him honorably to some exotic place.
This ambitious and weak person surrounded himself with other morally inferior men, who
did not allow any decent person to succeed there ... These people managed to poison the
atmosphere there totally and to keep the level of the institution low[25]

Magnes served as the first chancellor of the Hebrew University (1925) and later as its
president (1935–1948; followed by Sir Leon Simon as Acting President, 1948 to 1949).[26]
Magnes believed that the university was the ideal place for Jewish and Arab cooperation,
and worked tirelessly to advance this goal.

Magnes's responded to the 1929 Arab revolt in Palestine with a call for a binational solution
to Palestine.[27] Magnes dedicated the rest of his life to reconciliation with the local Arabs;
he particularly objected to the concept of a specifically Jewish state. In his view, Palestine
should be neither Jewish nor Arab. Rather, he advocated a binational state in which equal
rights would be shared by all, a view shared by the group Brit Shalom, an organization with
which Magnes is often associated, but never joined.[28] In a speech given at the reopening
of the university following the 1929 riots Magnes was heckled by members of the audience
for speaking of the need for Jews and Arabs to find ways to live and work together. He was
also attacked in the Jewish press.[29]

In late 1937, Magnes welcomed the Hyamson-Newcombe proposal for the creation of an
independent Palestinian state with all citizens having equal rights and each community
having autonomy, writing that it offered the 'portals to an agreement' between Jews and
Arabs in Palestine. This proposal was a document put together by leading a British Arabist,
Colonel Stewart Newcombe, and prominent British Jewish binationalist, Albert M Hyamson.
Magnes then tried to use the document to work with moderate Arabs towards an
alternative to partition that was not tainted by official British endorsement, however this did
not work out. Magnes's enthusiasm for the Newcombe-Hyamson proposal can be explained
by his commitment to Arab-Jewish cooperation, a binational state and his
acknowledgement of the importance of demographic balance for Arab negotiators.[30]

When the Peel Commission made its 1937 recommendations about partition and population
transfer for Palestine, Magnes sounded the alarm:

With the permission of the Arabs we will be able to receive hundreds of thousands of
persecuted Jews in Arab lands [...] Without the permission of the Arabs even the four
hundred thousand [Jews] that now are in Palestine will remain in danger, in spite of the
temporary protection of British bayonets. With partition a new Balkan is made [..] New York
Times, July 18, 1937.

With increasing persecution of European Jews, the outbreak of World War II and continuing
violence in Mandate Palestine, Magnes realized that his vision of a voluntary negotiated
treaty between Arabs and Jews had become politically impossible. In an article in January
1942 in Foreign Affairs he suggested a joint British-American initiative to prevent the
division of Mandate Palestine. The Biltmore Conference in May that year caused Magnes
and others to break from the Zionist mainstream's revised demand for a "Jewish
Commonwealth".[31][32] As a result, he and Henrietta Szold founded the small,
binationalist political party, Ihud (Unity).[33]

Magnes opposed the Partition plan. He submitted 11 objections to partition to the United
Nations Special Committee on Palestine.[34]

By mid-1948, when the conflict between the Jews and Arabs of Palestine was in full swing,
Magnes was pessimistic, and feared an Arab victory due to the Arabs' overwhelming
numerical superiority. Magnes expressed the hope that if a Jewish state were declared, the
United States would impose economic sanctions, saying that there could be no war without
money or ammunition. During a conversation with George Marshall on May 4, 1948, he
asked the US to impose sanctions on both sides. Calling the Yishuv an "artificial community",
he predicted that sanctions would halt "the Jewish war machine". He supported a March
1948 US trusteeship proposal, in which the UN would freeze the partition decision and force
both sides into a trusteeship with a temporary government ruling Palestine, until conditions
suited another arrangement, in the hope that there would be understanding and peace talks
would be possible. He predicted that even if a Jewish state was established and defeated
the Arabs, it would experience a never-ending series of wars with the Arabs.[35][36]

Magnes returned to the United States in April 1948 to participate in an anti-partition

campaign. When he left, his position at Hebrew University was in jeopardy, as more staff
moved against him due to his views. According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, the
Hadassah medical convoy massacre of April 13, 1948, was "in effect the final nail in the
coffin of Magnes' binationalism. It was not that he publicly recanted. But he understood that
it was a lost cause - and that his own standing in the Yishuv had been irreparably damaged."
At the funerals of the victims, eighteen staff members from Hebrew University signed a
petition protesting Magnes' view. The campaign was led by Professor Shimon Fritz
Bodenheimer, who called Magnes a "traitor".[37][38]

Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence, Magnes ceased advocating binationalism,

and accepted the existence of the state of Israel, telling one of his sons "do you think that in
my heart I am not glad too that there is a state? I just did not think it was to be." On May 15,
1948, following the declaration of independence, he called Israeli President Chaim
Weizmann to express congratulations.[39] During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Magnes
lobbied for an armistice, and proposed a plan for a federation between Israel and a
Palestinian state which he called the "United States of Palestine", under which the two
states would be independent, but operate joint foreign and defense policies, with Jerusalem
as the shared capital. He spoke with American, Israeli, and Arab officials, who expressed
some interest in his plans. During the summer of 1948, he also began to lobby increasingly
for a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.[40]

Magnes had been suffering from increasingly-poor health in 1948, and was already seriously
ill when he left Palestine in April. On June 10, he suffered a stroke and had to be hospitalized
for several weeks. Magnes died in New York of a heart attack on October 27, 1948, at the
age of 71.[41] Just before his death, he withdrew from the leadership of American Jewish
Joint Distribution Committee, a welfare organization he had helped establish. The reason
was that the AJJDC had not answered his plea for help for the Palestinian refugees: "How
can I continue to be officially associated with an aid organization which apparently so easily
can ignore such a huge and acute refugee problem?"[42]

Yiddish vs. Hebrew

Magnes' Yiddish and German-speaking father arrived in San Francisco in 1863 where he
abandoned Yiddish.[43] His mother was also German-speaking. Magnes grew up with
English as his first language but his command of German was sufficient for his two years
studying in Germany. In 1895 he heard Russian orator Rabbi Hirsch Masliansky lecture in
Hebrew and this awoke his interest in modern Hebrew.[44] While in Germany he joined a
group of young Zionists dedicated to learning Hebrew. He also made a determined effort to
learn Yiddish which he put to good use when working with new immigrants in New York.[45]
Once in Palestine he studied and became fluent in French, the other major European
language used in the Middle East. He also studied Arabic but never gained a command
beyond formal exchanges.[46]

Hebrew was the instructional language at the Hebrew University. In May 1927 Martin Buber
was invited to lecture at the University. When a group of students demanded that he
lecture in Hebrew rather than German he refused and had to be persuaded by Magnes not
to cancel his speech.[47] The same year David Shapiro, the publisher of the New York
Yiddish daily Der Tog announced he would raise $50,000 for an endowed chair of Yiddish at
the university. This provoked such a strong reaction, with posters around the city accusing
the university of treason and demonstrators outside Magnes' house under the slogan "The
chair of Jargon, the end of the university", that Magnes was forced to decline the offer. It
was not until 1949 that the university had a chair in Yiddish with David Sedan as its first
lecturer.[48]

Magnes could speak Hebrew eloquently on great occasions, but it was with an American
accent and in a literary style. He was more comfortable with English. In New York he had
been capable of moving large audiences with his public speaking, such as his 1915
fundraiser for the Joint Distribution Committee at the Carnegie Hall, or the Madison Square
Gardens anti-war rally in 1917; but in Palestine, where Hebrew was insisted on at public
gatherings, he was not able to have the same impact.[49]

Legacy
Memorializing his passing, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations wrote of Magnes
that he was:

...One of the most distinguished rabbis of our age, a son of the Hebrew Union College, a
former rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, New York, the founder and first chancellor of the Hebrew
University, the leader of the movement for good will between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, a
man of prophetic stature by whose life and works the traditions of the rabbinate, as well as
the spiritual traditions of all mankind were enriched.

The Judah L. Magnes Museum, in Berkeley, California, the first Jewish Museum of the West,
was named in Magnes' honor, and the museum's Western Jewish History Center has a large
collection of papers, correspondence, publications, and photographs of Judah Magnes and
members of his family. It also contains the conference proceedings of The Life and Legacy of
Judah L. Magnes, an International Symposium that the museum sponsored, in 1982.

The main avenue in Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus is named after Magnes, and so is
their publishing press the Magnes Press.

Footnotes
1 Bentwich, Norman (1954) For Zion's Sake. A Biography of Judah L. Magnes. First
Chancellor and First President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Jewish Publication
Society of America, Philadelphia. Library of Congress Number: 54 7440. Page 14.
2 Who's Who in America. vol. 17. 1932–1933.
3 Rosenbaum (1987), p. 21.
4 Rosenbaum (1987), p. 22.
5 Rosenbaum (1987), p. 23.
6 Kotzin, p. 19
7 William M. Brinner, Moses Rischin (1987) Like All the Nations?: The Life and Legacy of
Judah L. Magnes SUNY Press, ISBN 0-88706-507-4 p 30
8 Bentwich. Pages 24-32.
9 Judah Leon Magnes
10 Handlin, Oscar. "Introduction". In Louis Marshall: Champion of Liberty, ed. Charles
Reznikoff, p. xxiv
11 Staff. "Rabbi Attacked Reform Judaism; Trustees of Temple Emanu-El Weighing Effect of
Orthodox Sermon by Dr. Magnes.", The New York Times, May 12, 1910. Accessed March 5,
2009.
12 Bentwich. Pages 78-81.
13 Bentwich. Pages 83-86.
14 Bentwich. Pages 82,83.
15 Bentwich. Page 88.
16 Bentwich. Pages 98,99.
17 Bentwich. Page 101.
18 Agar, Herbert (1960) The Saving Remnant - An account of Jewish survival, Viking Press. p.
30 (Compass Books Edition - 1962).
19 Bentwich. Pages 99-102.
20 Samson, Gloria Garrett: The American Fund for Public Service: Charles Garland and
Radical Philanthropy, 1922–1941 (p. 28)
21 Bentwich. Pages 102–104.
22 Bentwich. Pages 105–110.
23 Bentwich. Pages 120, 105, 108, 110.
24 Bentwich. Pages 56, 64.
25 Albrecht Fölsing, Albert Einstein: A Biography, (trans. Eald Osers), Penguin, 1998, 494–
495.
26 "Office of the President | ‫ | האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים‬The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem". New.huji.ac.il. 2017-09-01. Retrieved 2020-02-18.
27 Rafael Medoff (1997) Zionism and the Arabs: an American Jewish dilemma, 1898–1948
Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0-275-95824-8 p 54
28 Walter Laqueur (2003) A History of Zionism Tauris Parke Paperbacks, ISBN 1-86064-932-7
p 251
29 Kayyali, Abdul-Wahhab Said (no date) Palestine. A Modern History Croom Helm. ISBN
086199-007-2. p.151
30 Apter, Lauren Elise Disorderly Decolonization: The White Paper of 1939 and the End of
British Rule in Palestine, ProQuest, 2008, pp.78-80, 71
31 Michael Oren, Power, Faith and Fantasy, ISBN 0-393-33030-3 Decision at Biltmore, pp
442–445
32 American Jewish Year Book Vol. 45 (1943–1944), Pro-Palestine and Zionist Activities, p
207
33 William M. Brinner, Moses Rischin (1987) Like All the Nations?: The Life and Legacy of
Judah L. Magnes SUNY Press, ISBN 0-88706-507-4 p 150
34 Ayalon Eliach, Yale Israel Journal, "Israel, India, and the Binational Fantasy". Archived
from the original on October 13, 2007. Retrieved 2010-07-23.
35 1948 diaries: Saving the Jews from themselves - Haaretz.
36 Justus D. Doencke, Journal of Libertarian Studies Vol. 2 No. 4, Principle and expediency:
The State Department and Palestine p 5
37 Morris, Benny: One State, Two States. Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Pgs 55-56
38 Kotzin, p. 314
39 Kotzin, p. 317
40 Kotzin, pgs 318-320
41 Dr. Judah L. Magnes, President of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Dies in New York
42 Magnes 1982, p.519
43 Bentwich. Page 14.
44 Brentwich. Page 21.
45 Bentwich. Pages 25, 30 & 39.
46 Bentwich. Pages 140, 141.
47 Segev, Tom (2000) One Palestine, Complete - Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate.
Little, Brown & Co. ISBN 0-316-64859-0. Pages 263, 264.
48 Bentwich. Page 163; Segev. Pages 266-268.
49 Bentwich. Pages 99, 102 & 307.

Works
Aknin, Joseph ben Judah. (Editor), Berlin, 1904.
The Jewish Community of New York City. New York: n.p., 1909.
Report to the Joint Distribution Committee. Berlin: Commission of the American Jewish
Relief Funds, 1917.
Russia and Germany at Brest-Litovsk: A Documentary History of the Peace Negotiations.
New York: Rand School of Social Science, 1919.
Amnesty for Political Prisoners: Address Delivered in Washington, D.C. on April 17, 1919.
New York: National Civil Liberties Bureau, n.d. [1919].
War-time Addresses, 1917–1921. New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1923.
Like All the Nations? Jerusalem, 1930.
Addresses by the Chancellor of the Hebrew University. Jerusalem: Azriel Press, 1936.
The Bond. Two letters to Gandhi with Martin Buber. Rubin Mass, Jerusalem, April, 1939.
Addresses by the Chancellor of the Hebrew University. Jerusalem, 1946.
In the Perplexity of the Times. Jerusalem, 1946.
Palestine — Divided or United? The Case for a Bi-National Palestine before the United
Nations. With M. Reiner; Lord Samuel; E. Simon; M. Smilansky. Jerusalem: Ihud, 1947.
Arab-Jewish Unity: Testimony before the Anglo-American Inquiry Commission for Ihud
(Union) Association. With Martin Buber. London: Victod Gollancz. 1947.
Towards Union in Palestine, Essays on Zionism and Jewish-Arab Cooperation. With M.
Buber, E. Simon. Ihud, Jerusalem, 1947.

Further reading
Arthur A. Goren (ed.), Dissenter in Zion: From the Writings of Judah L. Magnes. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.
Norman Bentwich, For Zion's Sake. A Biography of Judah L. Magnes. First Chancellor and
First President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Jewish Publication Society of
America, Philadelphia. 1954.
William M. Brinner and Moses Rischin, Like All the Nations?: The Life and Legacy of Judah L.
Magnes. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987.
Ben-Dror, Elad The Mediator: Ralph Bunche and the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1947-1949 (Ben
Gurion Institute, 2012)
Kotzin, Daniel P.: Judah L. Magnes: An American Jewish Nonconformist. Syracuse University
Press, 2010.
David Barak-Gorodetsky,Judah Magnes: The Prophetic Politics of a Religious Binationalist.
Jewish Publication Society & University of Nebraska Press, 2021.