Page 17-THE NEWS-January, 1988
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This *n That
Ben-Gurion: The Burning
Ground, 1886-1948. Shabtai
Teveth. Houghton Mifflin
Company, 2 Park Street,
Boston, MA 02108. 1981. 876
pages. $36.00.
Reviewed by Joseph Aaron
If you want to know some
thing about the modern state
of Israel, you have to know
something about David Ben-
Gurion, you have to read
Shabtai Teveth’s new book.
Fourteen years in the mak
ing, and fourteen years after
Ben-Gurion’s death, the book
provides a fresh, in-depth look
at the forces that shaped the
man who did more than any
one else to shape the reborn
State of Israel. And it does it
in 876 pages, no less. Pages
that deal only with events in
Ben-Gurion’s life up to 1948,
no less.
That the book is being pub
lished in 1987 is no accident,
coming as it does midway be
tween the just-concluded
celebration of the 100th an
niversary of Ben-Gurion’s
birth and the soon-to-be
celebration of the 40th an
niversary of Israel’s
independence.
That the destinies of Ben-
Gurion and Israel became so
linked is no accident, either.
Teveth, a senior research
fellow at the Dayan Center for
Middle East Studies at Tel
Aviv University, shows how
almost from the very beginn
ing, the man who would
become Israel’s first prime
minister, felt he had a mission,
that he was destined to lead
Jews back to the promised
land.
Born in 1886 in tsarist-
controlled Poland, young
David Gruen’s life was
steeped in Zionist thought.
His grandfather began teach
ing him Hebrew at the age of
three; his father, a local Zionist
leader, filled him with a love
for Eretz Yisrael.
Using unimpressively ex
haustive research, Teveth
goes beyond and behind those
facts to provide detail after
detail, anecdote after anec
dote, much of it new, to paint
a vivid portrait of the environ
ment and the influences that
surrounded Ben-Gurion and
the ways in which he reacted
to it.
In the process, we discover
fascinating tidbits such as
that while Ben-Gurion always
claimed to have given up the
Zionist dream of life as a
farmer reluctantly and under
pressure, in fact, he never had
any desire to be a farmer, con
sidering it too confining. We
also leam that while, until his
dying day, Ben-Gurion stub
bornly claimed that both his
father and grandfathers were
lawyers, Teveth conclusively
shows that they were not.
Teveth’s smooth writing
style and eye for detail carry
us along as the twenty-year-
old Gnien leaves Poland for
Palestine in 1906. And shows
us how, in 1910, as he began
the lon^ journey that would be
his life’s work, he changed his
Ben-Gurion
name to Ben-Gurion “to cele
brate my second birth.”
From there, Ben-Gurion’s
life reads like the history of the
Jewish people in the 20th Cen
tury, with which it is so inter
twined. One of the most fas
cinating parts of the book is
Teveth’s revelation that Ben-
Gurion had a premonition of
just what the 20th Century
had in store for the Jewish
people.
Discovering a forgotten ex
pense account of Ben-Gurion’s,
Teveth found that, in August
1933, while changing trains in
the Munich railroad station,
Ben-Gurion purchased a copy
of Adolph Hitler’s Mein
Kampf.
“Hitler’s rule imperils the
entire Jewish people,” Ben-
Gurion noted all too propheti
cally in January i934. He
figured the Zionists had “four
to five years” to rescue Jews.
Indeed, it would be exactly
five years later that the death
machinery would swing into
action,
Ben-Gurion’s insight into
the fate awaiting Eastern
Europe’s Jews, Teveth shows
us in a gripping narrative,
made him a driven man, single-
minded and of iron will, deter
mined to bring a Jewish state
into being. He was, at once,
that rare combination of mas
ter politician, adept at getting
things done, and biblical vi
sionary, who saw the oppor
tunity had presented itself to
make possible what had, for so
long, been impossible.
We follow him as he moved
rapidly up the Zionist ladder,
serving as head of the His-
tadrut, chairman of the Jewish
Agency, crafting solutions,
recognizing trends, fashioning
compromises, pursuing the
path he, and sometimes only
he, believed would achieve the
ultimate goal.
Thanks to Teveth’s mastery
of Ben-Gurion’s letters and
diaries, and his hundreds of
personal interviews with Ben-
Gurion, we have a ringside
seat at the incredible political,
ideological and personal strug
gles Ben-Gurion engaged in as
he outmaneuvered and con
founded both his critics and
allies, in the end, accom
plishing exactly what he set
out to accomplish.
But just as we come to see
Ben-Gurion, the leader, in a
new light, so Teveth gives us
new insight into Ben-Gurion,
the man. Teveth provides
fascinating detail of Ben-
Gurion’s uneasy relationship
with Chaim Weizmann, his
voracious appetite for know
ledge, his three mistresses,
and his neglect of his wife
Paula and their three children.
In all, a complex and
riveting portrait of a complex
man on a complex mission.
Thus, while to know anything
about the modern state of
Israel is to know something
about David Ben-Gurion, to
read this book is to know
much more about how both
came to be.
•
Joseph Aaron is editor of
Chicago JUF NE and a fre
quent contributor to Jewish
publications around the coun
try.
JLUB
Jewish Books
in Review
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Schwartz
Jared N. Schwartz, MD, PhD, director of the department of
pathology and laboratory medicine at Presbyterian Hospital
and chairman of the N.C. Mescal Society, has
been awarded the Herbert Lsinsky Memorial
Award. This award is presented to a board-
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respected leadership consistent with the goals
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cent pregnancy prevention was presented to The Mecklenburg
Council on Adolescent Pregnancy of Charlotte. Barbara Ziegler
is the director of MCA P.
•
Daniel Anthony, vice president of Plej’s Mill Outlet, was one
of two recipients of the William Ettin Human Relations Award
given annually by the home furnishings divi-
I sion of the American Jewish Committee. The
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home furnishing division of the American
Jewish Committee.
Anthony, 36, and his wife, Brenda, are ac
tive members of Carmel Baptist Church.
The American Jewish Committee was
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vance human rights. Headquartered in N.Y., the organization
has chapters and units in 100 U.S. cities.
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Gabrielle Reznek, daughter of Phyllis Reznek and Philip
Reznek, a student at West Charlotte, received an honorable
mention for acting at the regional competition of the N.C.
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month at UNCC.
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Jodi Mond, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Irving Mond, a junior
at Jacksonville U., was inducted into the National Society of
Collegiate Journalists.
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Visitors of UNC-CH.
•
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority established
a commissioned award in honor of Dr. David Citron, who retired
after 35 years as a Charlotte physician, most recently as direc
tor of medical education at Charlotte Memorial Hospital.
•
Marc Edlein, son of Mr. and Mrs. Saul Edlein, graduated from
East Carolina U. with a B.A. in Commercial Art.
•
Edward Nadelman, United Family Services executive direc
tor, was honored at a recent luncheon for having served UFS
for 27 years. He retired as the agency’s consultant last month.
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