Israel's Ben-Gurion A Modern Moses
Kenworthy, Leonard S.
Israel's Ben-Gurion A Modern Moses by LEONARD S. KENWORTHY The most isolated area I visited in -¦- nine months of recent travel in the new and emerging nations of the world was not some village...
...we must find other means to generate power...
...Then, as if to summarize, he said, "Yes, changing the face of the country meant more to us than all the books we read...
...We are all living in that one house...
...His grey suit was set off by a blue tie...
...I had heard Ben-Gurion the historian and Ben-Gurion the dreamer and visionary, and so I said, "On my trip I have heard almost nothing about atomic energy and other possibilities for the future...
...As young men we asked ourselves what life would be like for the oncoming generation...
...They were men who had been saturated in Jewish literature and lore and the writings of the Nineteenth Century Russian novelists and poets...
...At 72 he is still fresh, eager, growing, a single-minded, stern, serious, shrewd, essentially shy man...
...His head was tilted back against the chair and his eyes half-closed, but he was alert, ready to set me straight on my use of the word "nation...
...We might conceivably have a million horsepower for every man, woman, and child...
...This, I thought, is a man with a sense of belonging to history, of creating history...
...No words were being added...
...All the changes of the last 6,000 years will be negligible compared to those which will come...
...This was the kind of talk which I had expected from several of the leaders of new nations—and had not heard...
...This is a man with a singleness of purpose which has dominated his life since he was a boy, which drove him to Palestine and sustained him through long and difficult years as a farmer and laborer, as a labor organizer, as the - secretary-general of the Histadrut and chairman of the Jewish Agency, and later as the protagonist for a separate state of Israel...
...the magnificent new buildings of the University of Jerusalem and the mammoth stadium in which the Tenth Anniversary celebrations took place...
...We do not have chiefs here but the problems of Ghana we have in miniature here in Israel...
...And that is possible...
...This was a change in our culture, for we did the manual labor...
...One world now is a practicality, a necessity...
...There ought to be a half million increase by immigration in the population of the Negev area...
...That is a rare mineral and only a couple of other nations have this resource...
...Though we must not belittle the value of the moral, political, and material assistance that the Diaspora is giving to Israel, we must not confuse this with personal assistance, for such confusion is nothing less than a profanation and a distortion of the truth...
...Very early we knew everything possible about Palestine...
...What about the part of the American Jews in all this...
...If they do, the changes will be impossible to foresee...
...There was no vitality in it...
...I was impressed by the electric machines for milking sheep at the Ein LEONARD S. KENWORTHY, professor of Social Studies at Brooklyn College, recently completed an extensive swing through Asia and Africa where he interviewed the rulers of newly independent countries in preparation for writing a book on that subject...
...We received a Russian education rather than a Polish one for that was part of the Russification of the period...
...south to Beersheba and the frontier outpost of Sde Boker in the Negev desert...
...I asked him if there were any special qualities required of the leaders of new nations, whether they had to represent the aspirations of their people...
...Prophesy is limited to fools," he replied...
...Then we must develop the use of flint for smelting iron...
...Here is a cheap process for irrigation...
...The great 'cosmic attachment'—that view must be developed in American youth...
...There was no Hebrew literature...
...I asked about political events in relation to his hopes for the future...
...Here in Israel we understand Ghana better than you do for we must achieve in a few years what it took you generations to accomplish...
...It was not a question merely of going to Palestine...
...Then we will need to exploit the new resources we are sure exist...
...We must settle all the available land, especially in the Negev, using all the water we can find to make farming and industrialization and living possible there...
...Ben-Gurion had been able to lead his people into the Promised Land and to help them rebuild it as a modern Moses, a Twentieth Century leader...
...Here was Ben-Gurion "the curious" speaking, an avid reader all his life, reading in new fields and in new languages when it was necessary to discover what he wanted to know— military history and tactics, science and technological development, and, recently, the relation of mind and health and the problems of old age...
...As I thought of the great Jewish leaders through the centuries, he seemed to come closest to the Old Testament prophet Moses, who had led the Jewish people out of Egypt centuries ago and had taken them as far as the Promised Land...
...This time he closed his eyes completely and I felt I was hearing some Old Testament prophet dreaming his dreams, seeing his visions of the future...
...But I was also struck by the rioting in Jerusalem by orthodox Jews protesting the innovation of men and women bathing together in a new swimming pool and by the evidence of military might on the trip into the Negev...
...we want to live in peace—more than that, we want to live cooperatively...
...He merely said, with emphasis: "We want to attract pioneering youth from the U.S.A...
...There was no Jewish community when we came...
...Then he turned to my question about leaders...
...But to come back to Ghana, you cannot get rid of chiefs in a hurry but you can get rid of the attachment of people to chiefs...
...We were not minors...
...And of course the Bible...
...At 14 we did not consider ourselves young in Plonsk [his birthplace in Poland while it was under the control of the Czar...
...I am afraid that sense is lacking in America now...
...And he might have added on many other things for it was out of the late Nineteenth Century Russian that he, Chaim Weizmann, Isaac Ben-Zvi, and so many others had emerged, all dissatisfied with Jewish life and all determined to bring changes to their people...
...He had said: "In New York and Miami, in London and Paris, it is impossible to take part in the building of Israel...
...No stable government...
...We did not realize what the land was like when we came...
...Everywhere there were new roads, new schools, new factories, new fields, new homes, and giant new concrete pipes to carry the precious water to fields and factories...
...I learned Hindi because the various translations of Buddha varied so widely and I wondered what the original really said...
...We must melt down this fantastically divergent assemblage and cast it afresh in the die of a renewed nationhood . . . giving it a single language, a single culture, a single citizenship, a single loyalty...
...everything has had to be made...
...We were not used to this...
...This was the Ben-Gurion who had always been fearful of moderation and compromise...
...We had a group of boys, a Zionist Socialist group, who spoke Hebrew and taught the children of poorer people...
...We had to achieve it all...
...We thought we understood the world...
...We will have to improve transportation...
...If not—we will wait...
...For several days I wandered about Israel, seeing the old sights and viewing the new...
...His answer came in clipped phrases: "Millions of trees...
...now it is a city of 30,000...
...It was my cue for another question and I said, "I have been struck by the small number of Americans who have come to Israel to live...
...The first roads were a tremendous achievement, not just of construction but of culture...
...You can change people considerably in ten years...
...We have electrical power but it is expensive as the raw materials have to be brought from abroad...
...Several times I stopped to visit kibbutzim, the collective communities, and moshavim, the cooperative settlements...
...At times this quality had alienated friends like Chaim Weiz-mann and Judah Magnes and had perhaps pushed the Arabs into extreme positions, but it was also the quality which had brought about the formation of Israel and the incredible achievements of its first ten years...
...Everywhere I saw evidence of extensive surveys, of government and private planning, of the application of the latest scientific knowledge to everyday living as well as evidence of conflict within the country and between Israel and its neighbors...
...But I knew that Ben-Gurion was also interested in the literature of Greece, of India, and China and I asked him when he had discovered this rich vein of writings...
...Our two biggest problems," he replied, "are water and power, and the most important is water...
...These depend largely upon the relations of East and West," he replied...
...the beautiful new Mann auditorium in Tell-Aviv where the Israel Symphony Orchestra concerts are held...
...Ben-Gurion's grasp of the importance of new methods of power was one of the explanations of Israel's remarkable advancement...
...His face became serious again, his jaw stuck out and his eyes almost closed as he said firmly, "Life here has been the greatest teacher...
...We will go on with our plans undisturbed by outside events...
...As early as five, I began to think about Palestine for I felt like a stranger in Russia...
...We must exploit our known resources in the Negev and in the north as well as the mineral resources of the Dead Sea, which are tremendous...
...You need more emphasis upon human values, more emphasis upon spiritual values—not merely technology and comfort...
...Urge them to come...
...This comment struck a responsive chord for I had wondered whether the men who had led their countries to freedom were likely to be endowed with the qualities which were needed as administrators of newly formed nations and I commented on the sense of urgency I had noticed in Nkrumah of Ghana...
...Two new ports, one south on the Mediterranean to serve such cities as Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem...
...Also there must be a railroad extending from Elath to the Dead Sea from Beersheba...
...and west to Tel-Aviv...
...Hebrew was almost a dead language...
...We must create several industrial centers in the Negev...
...In the words of one of your great Americans, a house divided against itself cannot stand...
...How much interest do you have in these new scientific developments for Israel...
...We will need to pump water from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean areas on one side and Elath on the other...
...We need to be in a hurry as we said of Nkrumah but also we need to learn to have patience...
...After several days of intensive travel, extensive reading, and numerous interviews, I was ready to see the general manager of this new and impressive laboratory—David Ben-Gurion, Israel's prime minister and secretary of defense...
...I believe it is still alive...
...Israel's Ben-Gurion A Modern Moses by LEONARD S. KENWORTHY The most isolated area I visited in -¦- nine months of recent travel in the new and emerging nations of the world was not some village in the interior of Africa or Asia but the tiny state of Israel...
...In only one other instance in a series of interviews with 20 or more of the world's current political leaders, had I found a person—Nehru of India—who could articulate his beliefs as tersely as David Ben-Gurion, and who could reach ahead into the future as well as far back into the past...
...We had a beautiful synagogue with a Torah and pictures of Palestine...
...To hear more about his thinking along these lines, I asked him what he foresaw for Israel in the next 10 years...
...The swath of deserted houses, guarded by the representatives of the United Nations, is a grim reminder that an uneasy truce exists between Israel and all of its near neighbors, and the special passport required makes it clear that this new country has not even been recognized by the Arab nations...
...The Hebrew and Russian writers were terribly important to me," he continued...
...The Jews were limited in the trades and vocations," he added...
...We do not have water power...
...No trees...
...They will have to live in a larger cornmunity than America, for humanity, after all, is one...
...Between now and the year 2000," he continued, "people will see the greatest changes in the history of man...
...The necessity of forging a new state in Israel out of people from 79 or more countries led Ben-Gurion to say on another occasion: "This is a people unique, hurled to all the ends of the earth, speaking with many tongues, apprenticed to alien cultures, asunder in different communities and tribes...
...My interest in Indian and Chinese philosophy has come in the last 15 years...
...Here we have had to face the realities of history...
...My interest in the Greeks came early," he said...
...I thanked him and left...
...From Jerusalem I journeyed north to Haifa, Acre, and Nazareth...
...He smiled and his eyes twinkled and I saw the warm, human Ben-Gurion rather than the grim, pugnacious fighter I had seen before in a television interview and read and heard about...
...It lived on in poetry and in prayers...
...Some of these things depend upon us...
...When I met him in his office in Tel-Aviv, I found a short, stocky, 72-year-old man with a large face, deep-set twinkling eyes, dark busy eyebrows, and a halo of long, fluffy, white hair...
...Whole neighborhoods like Jerusalem, the Negev, the dunes along the seashore covered with trees...
...We need another such center at Elath and a road between Elath and Beersheba...
...Harod kibbutz and the small art gallery in that collective community...
...At different periods in their lives leaders must call upon different qualities, for freedom and what to do with freedom are vastly different problems...
...This should strengthen our economic relations for we have something to offer them and they have something to give us in return...
...No safety...
...They must learn that man belongs to something bigger than himself in the human sense and in the cosmic sense...
...I had noticed that he repeatedly used the word "must...
...I was especially interested in his description of the importance of the Negev, that tremendous wasteland in the south which has captured his imagination and whose importance Ben-Gurion had dramatized by making his home at Sde Boker in the heart of the Negev...
...It was not spoken...
...Think, for instance, of the difference between rich, primitive Ghana which has never really been a country and Burma with its long, uninterrupted history...
...If we are divided, we will be destroyed...
...Another port at Elath on the Gulf of Aquaba, to connect us to the two great areas of Asia and Africa with more than half of the world's population...
...Nobody can foresee the political future...
...In fact, they are each different and should not be grouped together...
...I said in the beginning that there were some things over which we have control, some over which we have no control...
...No language...
...But now there was no diatribe...
...He paused and opened his eyes...
...Walking through the Mandelbaum Gate in Jerusalem and the narrow no man's land which separates Jordan and Israel is a good introduction to this new country...
...All I can tell you is what I would like to see happen here...
...We must make advantages of disadvantages...
...They didn't consider themselves part of it and local people did not consider them a part of their world...
...And besides reading, what other influences have there been in your life...
...Distilled water is already in use in the United States and Kuwait...
...You know that someone has said that reading a book in translation is like kissing a girl through a handkerchief [and he chuckled at this idea...
...We were in revolt against the older generation on this...
...The pioneering spirit has not died out among the Jewish youth there...
...It is a new state and it differs radically from the others...
...We need to be self-sufficient and therefore we need to harness the power of the sun, the atom, the wind, the sea tides...
...Much depends upon the scientists—if they achieve the use of thermonuclear energy, not fission but fusion...
...Remember that Beersheba nine years ago was a town of 3,000...
...There were no roads...
...At times he had exploded against those who talked about Israel as if it were their land and yet were not willing to migrate there...
...I knew that he felt strongly on this point and I was prepared for a diatribe...
...others depend upon others...
...Perhaps this singleness of purpose had even become an obsession, making him at times pugnacious, unrelenting, ruthless...
...and the use of solar heating in the Sde Boker settlement as well as the common room made delightfully cool by the use of gypsum in its construction...
...I asked...
...Turning to the role American youth could play and the type of education they needed, he commented: "What American youth needs is less personal comfort, less television, less cinema...
...Israel," he said, "is not a new nation...
...We are willing to live in peace...
...For atomic energy we have the materials—uranium is a by-product of our phosphates...
...Yes, leaders represent the aspirations of their people but they are often hidden aspirations, aspirations not realized by the people...
...Pioneering is the richest and greatest experience that men can have—developing all kinds of human abilities...
...The Jewish people there were not a part of the land in which they lived...
...I decided to learn Greek in order to understand them...
...Things have not been given us here...
...Again he chided me, saying, "Now, remember that you in the United States have 'arrived' and do not need to do things in a hurry...
...Nothing was taken for granted, as nothing existed...
...This is a man, nevertheless, who has soared above his compatriots partly because he is curious, inquisitive, ready to learn something new— whether Indian philosophy, military tactics, or the latest advances of scientific research...
...We read it in our generation, not just the commentaries upon it as many did in those days...
...Life could not continue as it was...
...When we wanted to build houses, we had to hire Arabs...
...Yes, the greatest teacher was the necessity to face life, nature, ourselves...
...What they need is more communal spirit, more spiritual interest...
...To learn about his youth and where he acquired his passion for Zionism, I inquired what life was like for him when he was 13 or 14...
...it was a question of remaking ourselves...
Vol. 22 • December 1958 • No. 12
