Born in the San Francisco Bay area, Magnes was ordained as a rabbi in 1900 and helped found such U.S. organizations as the American Jewish Committee and American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. An advocate of a binational state in Palestine, he immigrated there in 1922 and never stopped seeking an agreement with the Arabs. He was the first chancellor and president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Photo: Zoltan Kluger, National Photo Collection of Israel