SACHAR, ABRAM LEON

SACHAR, ABRAM LEON (1899–1993), U.S. educator and historian; founding president of brandeis university . Sachar was born in New York and brought up in Saint Louis. In 1929 he began to teach history at the University of Illinois. Sachar was one of the organizers of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation and played an important role in its development, establishing Hillel Houses for Jewish students on the campuses of American universities. He himself directed the University of Illinois unit from 1929 to 1933 and then served as national director of the Hillel Foundations from 1933 to 1948. In 1948 he was appointed the first president of Brandeis University and was largely responsible for its rapid development, guiding its academic progress and raising the requisite funds for the construction of its extensive campus. In 1968 Sachar was appointed chancellor of the university and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His writings include a popular one-volume A History of the Jews (19655); a history of Jewish life between the two world wars, Sufferance Is the Badge (1939); The Course of Our Times (1972); Brandeis University: A Host at Last (1976); and The Redemption of the Unwanted: From the Liberation of the Death Camps to the Founding of Israel (1983). His son HOWARD MORLEY SACHAR (1928– ), historian, was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He taught history at the University of Massachusetts in 1953 and later directed Hillel Foundations at UCLA and Stanford University. In 1961 he became founder-director of Brandeis University's Jacob Hiatt Institute in Israel. From 1965 he taught modern and Middle Eastern history at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. In 2004 he became professor emeritus at the university. Sachar's works include The Course of Modern Jewish History (1958); Aliyah: The Peoples of Israel (1961); From the Ends of the Earth: The Peoples of Israel (1964); Emergence of the Middle East, 1914–1924 (1969); Europe Leaves the Middle East, 1936–1954 (1972); a novel, The Man on the Camel (1980); Egypt and Israel (1983); Diaspora: An Inquiry into the Contemporary Jewish World (1985); and A History of Israel: From the Aftermath of the Yom Kippur War (1987). (David Rudavsky / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)