Part 1 of "David Ben-Gurion"

This story has never been published before.

David Ben-Gurion, Leader of Israel

May 14, 1948. The hours slowly passed by approaching midnight when the British Mandate would end. It was afternoon in the Art Museum in Tel Aviv as a short stocky man, whose dark eyes flashed with determination and courage, began to speak, reading from a piece of paper with great feeling. A small group of men and women listened with passionate intensity. The lights in the room shone on his bushy white side hair and nearly bald head. The moment that he had dreamed of, struggled towards and fought for was fast approaching.
“In the Land of Israel the Jewish people came into being. In this land was shaped their spiritual, religious and national character. Here they lived in sovereign independence. They created a culture of national and universal import and gave to the world the eternal “Book of Books.”. . .” On he read, until at last, reaching the end of the paper, he laid it on a desk. The tension in the room grew as he silently reached for a pen. Two other men crowded forward to watch this historic event. There was a glint of a smile in those dark eyes as he boldly signed his name, David Ben-Gurion. As his pen scrawled across the paper, his thoughts flashed back nearly fifty-one years.

The Early Years

“David! Have you read the news?” In his home town of Plonsk, Russia (now a part of Poland), eleven-year-old David Green looked up from the book he was reading,.
“What news, Father?”
“About Dr. Theodore Herzl.” Young David looked puzzled. Slowly he shook his head. His father quickly explained, “Herzl is an Austrian Jew, and he has just called together a congress of Jewish delegates to meet in Switzerland! The delegates are from many different countries.”
“But what are they meeting for?” David interrupted.
“To try to secure a national home for Jewish people in the land of Palestine!”
“Palestine! Oh, Father!” David’s eyes shone with excitement - the same excitement that was in his father Avigdor’s heart. After his father left him, David sat staring at the book in his hand, yet not seeing it. A homeland for their people, his people. For centuries the Jewish people had been persecuted and oppressed in almost every country where they lived. The Jews were the troublemakers and scapegoats; the fewer there are the better the world will be seemed to be the general idea of most of the rulers towards these people of the Bible. And yet, the Jewish people continued to live and dream of maybe one day returning to the land of their heritage where they would be free to live as their ancestors had. Now maybe all this talk that David had heard all of his life would become a reality. As the days went by, there was much excitement in the house over this wonderful news, but it was soon subdued as Sheindel, David’s quiet, gentle mother, died giving birth to her eleventh child. Though overcome with grief, Avigdor did his best to fill the place of both father and mother to his children.
The years passed by swiftly and at 15, David, always more serious -minded than his friends, was an able leader for the cause of Zionism (a Jewish homeland) in Russia. He helped form a group of youths all interested in Zionism. Like Ezra, the scribe of the Old Testament, who returned to Palestine from Babylon some 25 centuries before them, so these youths (Their group was called “Ezra”) were eager to go for the first time to Palestine. Five years passed. The persecution of the Jews during the Russian revolution and afterwards increased greatly before David was prepared to leave his family and the land of his birth to travel with a friend to Palestine.

to be continued