David Ben-Gurion: On TANACH, The People, and the Land
Matia Kam

David (Green) Ben-Gurion (1886-1973) was also known as Zaken, the Elder, was the first prime minister and the first minister of defense of the state of Israel and was the state’s architect. During his years as prime-minster he shaped the new country. He was “the pragmatic and political power” yet was always an “inquisitive thinker”, a lover of books “whose cultural vision contributed a spectacular historical and spiritual dimension” to his pragmatic approach.[1] His whole life, including the years that he occupied major political positions, from leading the Yishuv (the pre-state years) through the establishment of the state, Ben-Gurion displayed interest in cultures, in history and philosophy.

Ben-Gurion knew several languages, including Greek that he acquired in order to read ancient philosophy in the original. In his later years he became interested in Hinduism and in Buddhism. He wrote numerous books and articles on a wide range of topics, including the Tanach, and received numerous literary awards.

Ben-Gurion saw the Tanach as the most significant book not only for the Jewish people, but for “humankind as a whole”: a book that gave the world monotheism, one God and “high human values, values of universal camaraderie, values of justice and law, truth and compassion, equality of all nations and the pursuit of peace that are the essence of the teachings of the prophets and the foundation of Jewish ethics.”[2]

Ben-Gurion declared that he read the bible “out of great love and deep admiration,” yet beyond reading and studying he wrote essays and articles on biblical topics, he participated and lectured at conferences of the Israel Society for Biblical Research and at home had a regular Tanach study group that included academics and biblical scholars. In his numerous articles and speeches, Ben-Gurion used biblical quotes from the Tanach that was always on his desk. In a letter to the judge of the Israel Supreme Court, Dr. Moshe Zilberg, Ben-Gurion wrote, “Ever since I came to the land, I was shaped primarily by the Tanach, since only

here on the land, I began to grasp its depth and it had shaped me more than any other book – Jewish and non Jewish.” In another letter he wrote, “the source and roots of Judaism—as faith and a people—is in the book of books,” and particularly in the ethics of the prophets.

David Ben-Gurion wrote, “I am obviously a Jew, but I am not an Orthodox Jew nor a Reform Jew. He defined himself as devout in two principles” the first is,” as he wrote to Rabbi Ezra Spicehandler of the Reform Movement, “faith in God. I am convinced in the truth of God more than in any other truth.”[3] Under the glass on his desk, Ben-Gurion placed five quotes from Torah and Prophets that he defined as “foundations of Judaism laid by…the prophets” and that he wished to keep in the forefront. The first was the belief in the Creator of the world, “Thus said God creator of the heaven He is God who formed the earth and all that it produces, He fashioned it” [Isaiah 45:18].

Ben-Gurion was a consummate believer and a secular Jew. He did not keep a kosher kitchen at home, and in Israel he did not go to synagogue, with one exception, “on the day of Israel’s declaration of independence and in response to an invitation by Rabbi Berlin”. At the same Ben-Gurion reported, “when I go abroad, I love to go on Shabbat to synagogue.” The distinction he made between not going to synagogue in Israel but loving doing it abroad is interesting and thought provoking. Ben-Gurion’s deep faith in God and his secular way of life have been, and still is, a kind of oxymoron that many have hard time accepting. This is particularly the case today when the common practice has been to categorize people into simplistic clear-cut, either or identities making it difficult to accept complex identities like the one that Ben-Gurion represented in his life and his world-views.

In his book “The Renewed State of Israel’ he writes that “the Jewish people, after thousands of years of wandering and suffering all over the world, have arrived anew to their original sovereign existence and homeland—will not give up its historic vision, its great spiritual inheritance, to merge its national redemption in the larger redemption of all nations; in its national independence, [Israel] will not abandon its universal humane values…the ethical values of our prophets, values of truth and justice of ??? ????, of universal camaraderie and human freedom. A person according to our Torah was born in God’s image… in the image of eternal being the inclusive, universal that has no beginning and not end, no body and no physical image, unattainable by the seekers of materiality; it is an existence full of compassion, truth and justice, all powerful and creating everything. This story of the creation of the human (Adam) in God’s image is the source of universal humanity, of equality of all humans-that the Israelite prophets have given the whole world.”[4]

The goal of the my following essays for this web site is to shine the light on Ben-Gurion’s unique and distinct ideas and beliefs as lover and scholar of the Tanach. The essays draw on his vast and rich literary heritage and I chose what I consider his most significant ideas and I hope that I will do justice to the writer and his truth. My essays focus on biblical topics regarding the past of the people of Israel yet have a clear connection to the creation of the state of Israel and the future of the Jewish people. I follow in this task Ben-Gurion’s Zionist ideology and his faith in the firm link between past and present, between Israel and the diaspora and between the state and the eternal values of Tanach.