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Let us start by learning a bit about David Ben-Gurion

Childhood and Youth, 1886–1906

The first Prime Minister of the State of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, was born David Joseph Gruen in a small town in Eastern Europe. At that point in history, the Jewish people were a disenfranchised minority, dispersed around the world, speaking different languages with different rights in each country that they inhabited. Most Jews at this time lived in Shtetls – small villages in eastern Europe in which Jewish communities lived alongside non-Jewish ones.
At the age of 14, young David and two friends founded an organization that aimed to promote Hebrew as a spoken language.

Formative Years 1906 – 1921

David Gruen immigrated to the Land of Israel at the age of twenty. He did so as part of a group of young men and women who, influenced by revolutionary currents in Europe, sought to establish an autonomous Jewish society in the Land of Israel that would epitomize the social ideal to which humankind should aspire.
In Ben-Gurion’s thinking, the process should be spearheaded by labor and the working class.
After the outbreak of World War One, the Ottoman Empire, then ruling over the Land of Israel, saw Ben-Gurion as a threat and exiled him. He continued his work for the Zionist mission from New York where he met his wife, Paula Monbaz. He travelled around the Us to promote Zionist ideals based on socialist ideology.

From Class to Nation, 1921–1935

World War One had changed the map of the world substantially and Britain received a mandate to govern the Land of Israel. The main purpose of the Mandatory Government was to keep the promise stated in the Balfour Declaration—to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine. This promise created friction between the British authorities and the Jews, on the one hand, and between them and the Arab inhabitants of the country, on the other. The Jewish national home in the making, Ben-Gurion thought, should be led by the working class because most Jews belonged to this class and because it was the most dynamic force in building the national home. The class perspective would also help heal the national schism. The Jewish working class in the Land of Israel, however, was small and weak. Thus, Ben-Gurion spent the 1920s and up to the mid-1930s striving to unify and strengthen the labor movement so that it would become the strongest force in Zionism.

National Leader, 1935–1948

Ben-Gurion was elected Chair of the Zionist Executive and the Jewish Agency Executive at a particularly tumultuous period in Jewish history. The conflict between Jews and Arabs in the land of Israel was escalating; the plight of European Jewry, living under the threat of the Nazi regime, became catastrophic with the implementation of the Final Solution. Relations between the Zionist Movement and the British authorities were foundering. Ben-Gurion, together with his comrades, steered the Zionist Movement through the increasingly furious storm. Even when the war ended and the world realized the magnitude of the Holocaust, the struggle was not over. Ben-Gurion led the struggle for independence until a Jewish state in the Land of Israel was created, with the recognition of the United Nations, in the midst of a war with the country’s Arab inhabitants and neighboring countries.

The first Prime Minister 1948–1963

Ben-Gurion rose to the premiership in the midst of war whilst retaining responsibility for defending the country. The first months of his term were defined by the war, a matter of existential importance to the fledgling state. When the fighting wound down, the country’s first democratic elections took place. Ben-Gurion valued democracy and saw it as an essential part of the new State’s core. As the country’s first premier, he acted to solidify its infrastructure in many respects: education, the military, the economy, and mass immigration. As in any democratic system, Ben-Gurion had to make many compromises and pursued his state-building activities under their constraints.
It was during this period that he connected his life to the Negev and moved there initially in 1953 with his wife. He saw the Negev as a test for the people of Israel and a place where innovation and pioneering could thrive.

The Last Years, 1963–1973

Although seventy-seven years old when he resigned from the premiership, Ben-Gurion remained politically active almost until his death. During his last years, he and Paula decided to make their desert home in the Negev a permanent one and Ben-Gurion fulfilled his dream of being a pioneer once again. He wrote his memoirs, read and wrote books and received thousands of visitors at his home in the desert.
Paula passed away on January 29th, 1968.
David Ben-Gurion passed away on December 1st, 1973 (6th Kislev) and was buried in Midreshet Ben-Gurion. His request was that neither eulogies nor a military salute would be part of the funeral.

איתן דוניץ

מנהל המכון למורשת בן־גוריון

מנהל המכון למורשת בן־גוריון משנת 2018. למד לימודי תואר ראשון בפילוסופיה, מדעי המדינה ומשפטים ולימודי תואר שני בניהול מלכ”רים וארגונים קהילתיים. חובב השפה העברית על נגזרותיה, ספריה ושיריה. איש החברה האזרחית יותר מעשור ובן־גוריוניסט בנשמתו. גדל והתחנך במדרשת בן־גוריון ומאז הספיק לתור את הארץ, (וקצת) את העולם ולעלות בחזרה לנגב. חי בקיבוץ טללים עם עינב, רעייתו, ובנותיהם – ליאור גליה ורננה.