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en-gurion, david
unhesitatingly give the source of any random quotation from
the Talmud, Rashi, or tosafot. He published Li-Felagot Re’uven
(in 7 parts, Kaidan, Riga, Jerusalem, 1924–46), consisting of
*hadranim, i.e., discourses delivered on completing the study
of a talmudic tractate, interwoven with his novellae. He justified
the unusual form of his work by maintaining that while
novellae are little read, there was a considerable interest in this
form of talmudic learning. Bengis himself stated that he had
written, under the same title, a commentary on Alfasi, and sermons,
which remained in manuscript. Some of his halakhic
articles appeared in Tevunah (Jerusalem, 1941).
Bibliography: S. Schurin, Keshet Gibborim (1964), 40–43.
[Itzhak Alfassi]
BEN-GURION (Gruen), DAVID (1886–1973), Zionist leader,
Israeli statesman, first prime minister and defense minister of
Israel; member of the First to Eighth Knessets.
Early Years
Ben-Gurion was born in Plonsk (then in Russian Poland). His
father, Avigdor Gruen, was a member of Ḥovevei Zion and
his house was the center of Zionist activity in the town. His
mother Sheindel (née Friedman) died when he was 11 years
old. He was educated in a modern Hebrew-language ḥeder,
and studied secular subjects with private tutors. At the age of
14, Ben-Gurion was among the founders of a Zionist youth
group “Ezra.” He joined the *Po’alei Zion movement in 1903,
traveling and speaking on its behalf in Plonsk, Warsaw, and
smaller towns. During the 1905–06 revolution he was arrested
twice but released at the intervention of his father. In September
1906 Ben-Gurion immigrated to Ereẓ Israel, working in
the orange groves of Petaḥ Tikvah and in the wine cellars of
Rishon le-Zion. He was elected to the Central Committee of
Po’alei Zion. In 1907 he managed to have the sentence “the
Party aspires for political independence for the Jewish people
in this country” included in the party’s first platform, which
was drafted in the spirit of Ber *Borochov’s writings. Ben-
Gurion’s ideological positions during this period combined
Jewish nationalism with pragmatic socialism, which stressed
the obligation of every member of the movement to settle in
Ereẓ Israel and the right of the settlers to manage their own
affairs without interference from the Diaspora. He demanded
that Hebrew be the sole language of all Jewish public life in
Ereẓ Israel, including Po’alei Zion, and refused to collaborate
with the Yiddish party organ Der Anfang. In the 1907–10
Ben-Gurion was an agricultural worker and watchman in
Sejera and Milḥamiyyah in the Lower Galilee, Kinneret, and
Zikhron Ya’akov. In these years he became convinced that “the
settlement of the land is the only true Zionism, all else being
self-deception, empty words, and merely a pastime.” In 1910
Ben-Gurion joined the editorial staff of the new party organ
Aḥdut (“Unity”) in Jerusalem, together with Izhak *Ben-Zvi
and Raḥel Yanait. It was in this publication that he printed
his first articles under the name “Ben-Gurion,” which he
adopted from one of the last Jewish defenders of Jerusalem
against the Roman legions. The central theme of these articles
was that the yishuv must organize politically, together
with Jews in other parts of the new Ottoman state following
the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, and strive for Jewish autonomy
in Ereẓ Israel. In 1911 he and Ben-Zvi were elected as
delegates to the Eleventh Zionist Congress and participated
in the third world conference of Po’alei Zion in Vienna. The
same year Ben-Gurion joined a group of young Zionists who
enrolled at Turkish universities, with the object of establishing
close ties with the educated ruling circles in Turkey. At
first he lived in Salonika, and established contacts with the
large Jewish community there, but after Salonika was taken
over by the Greeks in 1912, he moved to Constantinople to
continue his law studies
1914–1921
When World War I broke out, Ben-Gurion and his party advocated
loyalty to Turkey and the adoption of Ottoman citizenship.
However, when the Turkish administration started
persecuting the Zionists, both he and Ben-Zvi were arrested
and accused of conspiring against Ottoman rule in order to
establish a Jewish state. In March 1915 they were exiled to
Egypt, where they met Joseph *Trumpeldor, who was engaged
in forming the “Zion Mule Corps” within the British army, an
activity to which both Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi objected, because
they feared that it endangered the yishuv without benefiting
the Zionist cause.
Later in 1915 Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi proceeded to New
York, where their main efforts were directed to the establishment
of the *He-Ḥalutz organization, preparing young Jews
for settlement in Palestine after the war. In 1917 Ben-Gurion
married Paula Munweis (born in Minsk, Russia, 1892), who
was a nurse in New York, and an active member of Po’alei
Zion. After the *Balfour Declaration Ben-Gurion was among
the first in the United States to call for the formation of Jewish
battalions to participate in the liberation of Palestine, writing
that “England shall not return the country to us. . . . A country
is acquired by a people only through the pain of labor and creation,
construction efforts and settlement. The Hebrew people
itself must turn this right into a living and existing fact.” Volunteering
for the British Army in May 1918, he reached Egypt
in August as a soldier in the *Jewish Legion – the 39th Battalion
of the Royal Fusiliers. There he met volunteers from the
labor movement in Palestine and with them started planning
for the establishment of a united workers’ movement in Palestine
after the War that would prepare for the mass Jewish
immigration expected to follow the liberation of the country
from Ottoman rule. However, they did not manage to see active
service, since their unit arrived in the country after the
British had already conquered it.
At the 13th conference of Po’alei Zion in Jaffa in February
1919, Ben-Gurion called upon Jewish workers in Palestine and
abroad to unite in forming a political force that would direct
the Zionist movement toward the establishment of a Jewish
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