Rav Meir Bar Ilan (1880-1949) was the leader of the religious Zionist Mizrachi movement in both the US and the British Mandate for Palestine. Born in Volozhin, Rav Bar Ilan was the son of the “Netziv,” Rav Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, head of the Volozhin Yeshiva. A descendant of Rav Meir Katzenellenbogen, the Maharam of Padua, he was connected to the House of David, as detailed in “The Unbroken Chain,” a genealogy of prominent Jewish families. Rav Bar Ilan was a member of the Seventh Zionist Congress who voted against the Uganda proposal, which called for the establishment of a temporary Jewish state in that country; he founded the Mizrachi Teachers’ Institute, was a member of the Joint Distribution Committee, served on the Jewish National Fund’s Board of Directors, was founder/ editor of the Hatzofeh news publication, coeditor of the Talmudical Encyclopedia and initiated the establishment of the Bar Ilan University, which is named after him. Bar Ilan served as Minister of Religion in the Israeli Government after the founding of the State.