PURELY COMMENTARY

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

David Ben-Gurion: Lover And Champion Of Bible Knowledge, Faith

David Ben-Gurion was accorded
recognition and due honors, on the cen-
tennial anniversary of his birth, in a
special article by Israel Prime Minister
Shimon Peres in the Sunday (Oct. 5)
New York Times Magazine.
The presently retiring Israel prime
minister wrote with affection about his
predecessor who was Israel's first prime
minister.
Peres wrote about Ben-Gurion the
Labor Zionist chief, and he recalled a
David Ben-Gurion meeting with France's
Charles deGaulle. The latter posed the
question about Israel's desire to assess
vaster territorial areas. Ben-Gurion re-
sponded that Israel desires and strives
for Jews, not territory. It needed explain-
ing, but B-G made his point about the
basic principle of Zionism — the redemp-
tion of Jews in their historic homeland.
This is the most important portion of
the Peres tribute to B-G. His NYTimes
article has many shortcomings. An
evaluation of the life and achievements
of B-G needs an account of his deep
interest in and love for the ,Bible, the
views he had on Diaspora Jewry, his ex-
planation of Godliness — which needs
c_apitalizing the G.
How could Peres have had an inti-
macy with B-G that could provide a de-
eper knowledge about the man who be-
came his chief in an interesting military
and political campaign that led him to
the Israel prime ministership? He was
born in Poland in 1923 and was not

Chasidic Boys Versus
Women Bus Drivers

Chasidic lads in New York's
United Talmudic Academy refused to
ride on a bus with a woman driver.
This inspired a New York Times
editorial entitled raising the question
"Who Should Die Chasidic School
Boys?" (Sept. 15).
The editorial is of sufficient
interest to be worth quoting. Its text:
Jewish religious law pro-
hibits male students who attend
a Chasidic school in Orange
County, New York, from riding
buses driven by women. Women
who drive the buses say they
are therefore victims of sex dis-
crimination — a violation of
Federal law. Which law should
rule? The secular one.
The Orthodox Jewish sect
prohibits men from virtually
any contact with women outside
of the home or family gather-
ings, and bars women from any
business activity. Adherence to
these teachings would provoke
no dispute if New. York law did
not require public school dis-
tricts to provide transportation
to non-public-school students.
Since it does, the Monroe-
Woodbury public school district
has been busing Chasidic stu-
dents to the United Talmudic
Academy.
School bus routes in
Monroe-Woodbury are normaity
assigned by seniority. Since
drivers are paid hourly, the
most desirable runs are the
longest, and those include serv-
ice for the Chasidic academy.
For years, the school district as-
signed only men to drive the
academy's male students, waiv-
ing seniority under a loophole
for situations where a driver

Continued on Page 21

2

Friday, October 24, 1986

Ben-Gurion

brought to Palestine by his pioneering
parents until 1934. By that time B-G
had already assisted in mobilizing volun-
teers for the Jewish Legion that fought
for. the liberation of Palestine from the
Turks. He had already strengthened the
Poale Zion as the oncoming Labor
Zionist force. He led the opposition to
both Chaim Weizmann and Vladimir
Jobotinsky in the advocacy of his ideas.
It was in 1922 that I sat on the plat-
form of the then Philadelphia-Byron
Street headquarters of the United He-
brew Schools, when B-G was pleading for
support for his party. There were only a
few dozen supporters in his audience at
the time. Shimon Peres wasn't born yet.
He did, however, know his chief when
B-G came to Detroit again' in 1951, as
prime minister, to organize the local
forces for the newly emerging Israel
Bond Organization. Then, in triumph,
speaking from the steps of the then City
Hall on Cadillac Square, his audience
numbered many, many thousands.
These are among the intimacies and
acquaintance with David Ben-Gurion,
and some of the important outgrowths of
such associations with the personality
who is counted among the greatest of the
century.
Ben-Gurion was not a religiously ob-
servant Jew. On the contrary, he shun-
ned the synagogue. Like most of the sec-
ularists in Labor Zionist ranks, he loved
traditions, was enchanted by the music
of the house of worship and also the
Chasidim. The acclaim and practice in
such enchantment was in the home or
the assembly halls.
Nevertheless, B-G possessed faith.
He expressed it to me in 1971 in the fol-
lowing letter that drew worldwide atten-
tion:
Dear Mr. Philip Slomovitz:
What the Israel evening
paper published at my 84th
birthday is true: "I have not the
slightest shadow of doubt that
God exists. He is not a body and
He is free from all the accidents
of matter. We can neither see
Him nor hear Him. He has no
likeness but He exists and with-
out Him nothing can exist in the
universe. This is a profound and
correct belief and no science can
speak a greater. truth than it."
This is conviction.
Yours, D. Ben-Gurion.
Twenty years before he had written
this credo, B-G already reversed previous
practices of not attending synagogue
services. In the year of his appearance in
this country to establish the Israel Bonds

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Shimon Peres

means of aiding Israel, as his nation's
prime minister, he attended Sabbath
services in the East 41st Street
Synagogue in New York. It was a sen-
sationalized identification with an Or-
thodox synagogue.
B-G, who became enamored with
Greek philosophers and numerous other
ideologies, was primarily a lover of the
Bible. On that score he was the very
faithful leader who constantly referred to
the legacies rooted in Jewish devotions.
Here is one of his definitions of Jews and
Judaism:
. . . "Everything we are as
Jews, including our drive occa-
sionally to grope beyond tradi-
tional bounds, comes directlyf-
rom the Bible. In size we are
nothing as a people and never
have been. Had we not been
children of the Book, who would
have heard of us? We should be
lucky to occupy a mere footnote
in history. As things stand, a
large part of history is our. doing.
We have never been far removed
from the mainstream, often un-
happily so and at peril."
On July 20, 1975, speaking in Nah-
alal, Israel, on the subject The Bible
and the Jewish People," he inspired his
state audience with the declaration:
The Book of Books has been our
most faithful and instructive guide, and
has implanted in our hearts universal
redemption. If we continue to walk in its
light, both the nation and its leaders will
be successful."
Ben-Gurion's love for the Bible was
indelibly incorporated in what could be
judged as an historic address he deliv-
ered on Jan. 19, 1972, at the World
Zionist Congress in Jerusalem. It was
less than two years before his death in
December 1973. He was not well physi-
cally, as the message to me, presenting
me with a copy of that address, indi-
cates. His mind was as sharp as ever and
he drew upon Prophecy to emphasize the
calls for Zionist actions by several of the
great Prophets.
I had heard him deliver that impor-
tant address and expressed a desire for
the text. Here is what he wrote as he
sent it on to me:

Tel Aviv, 11-3-1972
Dear Mr. Philip Slomovitz,
I received your letter of
March 3, 1972 together with
Rabbi Sherwin Wine's article,
The Zionist Dilemma.
I am still not well but I hope
in a week I will be able to return

home (to Sdeh-Boker). I also
enjoyed the conversation with
Henry Ford.
I am sending you my speech
at the least Zionist Congress, as
you asked me to do. Will you
please send me back the article
after you have read it?
Yours,
D. Ben Gurion
To:
Mr. Philip Slomovitz
17515 West 9 Mile Road, Suite 865
Southfield, Michigan 48075
U.S.A.
The original of the B-G address con-
tains an annotation in his own handwrit-
ing, giving date, place and occasion of
his Zionist Congress address. A reprod-
uction of the beginning and conclusion of
that address accompanies this column.
Ben-Gurion concluded his address by
stating: "I shall conclude with five verses
from the Tanach (Holy Scriptures) which
in my opinion are the essence of and "
mainstay of the quality of Judaism and
the secret of its existence ..."
Here are Bible quotations with
which he inspired world leadership at
the 1972 World Congress:
"For thus saith the Lord that
createth the Heavens, He is God that
formed the earth and made it. He estab-
lished it, He created it not a waste, He
formed it to be inhabited." — Isaiah
45:18.
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself. The stranger that sojourneth
with you shall be unto you as the
home-born among you, and thou shalt
love him as thyself; for ye were stran-
gers in the land of Egypt." — Leviticus
Chapter 19.
"I the Lord have called thee in
righteousness, and have taken hold of
thy hand and kept thee, and set thee for
a covenant of the people, for a light unto
the nation." — Isaiah 42:6.
"and He shall judge between the na-
tions, and shall decide for many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into
plowshares, and their spears into prun-
ing hooks; nation shall not lift up sword
against nation, neither shall they learn
war any more .. ." — Isaiah 2:4.
"And I will turn the captivity of my
people Israel, and they shall build the
waste cities, and inhabit them; and they
shall plant vineyards and drink the wine
thereof; and they shall also make gar-
dens, and eat the fruit of them. And I
will plant them on their, a land, so they
shall no more be plucked up out of their
land which I have given them, saith the
Lord thy God." — Amos 9:14, 15.
This is a classic legacy to. the People
Israel from the redeemed nation's first
prime minister. It is a lesson for scholars
and inspiration that will linger for all
time with his hope and faith.
There are two other localized items
that are unforgettable in recalling the
legacies left by David Ben-Gurion.
I have retained the invitation to the
dinner of welcome to "His Excellency
David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of the
State of Israel, on the occasion of his
visit to the United States and the inau-
guration of the State of Israel Bond Is-
sue, at the Statler Hotel, Detroit, Mich.,
Monday, May 21, 1951, 7:30 p.m., Black
Tie."
That's when the Israel Bonds move-
ment was started. The present
Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek became
a close friend at the time and there was
a special personal message from him and
from that occasion that also remains
memorable.
There is one other B-G item that is

Continued on. Page 20

