Leivick in Israel 1957, Part 8
My Visit With Ben Gurion
Part 7 can be found here. The series starts here.
My Visit With Ben Gurion
The day after the closing of the theoretical conference in Jerusalem (Friday, 16 August), I felt that something was physically amiss with me. From time to time — a kind of dizziness and nausea. I taxed all my strength in keeping up appearances. I didn’t want to make a fuss about it, particularly so as not to frighten my wife, who accompanied me on the present trip. Additionally, I had received at the Hotel Eden, where we found ourselves, a telephone call from the secretary of the head of government, Ben Gurion, that I was invited to Ben Gurion’s house on Saturday afternoon. Naturally, I desired to accept the invitation and still more strained with all my might not to ‘admit’ that I felt out of sorts.
Visiting and spending time with Ben Gurion is a matter in and of itself. From my visit to him in 1950, I recall that a conversation with him had touched upon the most critical problems of Jewish life and I also recall the friendly, stimulating atmosphere which ruled our conversation.1 Now, this time, in 1957, I was still more anxious about expecting productivity. Particularly when the theoretical conference had ended the previous day, where in my talk at the conference I came out against Ben Gurion’s attitude of leaping over the thousands of years of diaspora and jumping into the era of Joshua Ben Nun. I was, therefore, anxiously expecting encountering with the head of the government in his own home not only stimulation, but upset. Although I knew from before that he lived in a house, a simple, modest life, was a good host and a friendly conversationalist, I also knew, though, that he was a man with a strong will. With a profound belief in his convictions and does not easily retreat from his position.
There could certainly be no doubt in me that, due to my suddenly feeling as though almost unwell, I would not give up my visit. I shrugged off all the weakness and set off to Ben Gurion’s residence.
I went without my wife, because the invitation was only for men. From this, I inferred there would be more guests, that it wasn’t an invitation to a individual honouring, but to a special conversation, and that the conversation would likely be about the matters which were touched upon at the conference.
Outside, the late afternoon was wonderful, filled with a Shabbos peace. The sort of sunny Jerusalem one, not too hot, which can permeate you through and through. The streets and the public resting places had already started to fill with Shabbos strollers. Men, women, children. And children, in general, in all of Israel always look festive. Fresh, cheerful and graceful. The Hebrew in their mouths rings particularly sweetly, melodically. When I hear children in the streets of Israel speaking Hebrew freely, naturally, in their own intonations — I can never cease to wonder at the shock of how it has happened; how it is the language, as if on its own accord, is in their mouths, on their tongues, in their entire being. How such a marvel?
I walk through the streets of Jerusalem, both through the newly built and through the newly restored, and every time I stop at a group of children and listen to the sound of their words. I don’t understand all the words, and the more I don’t understand all the words, all the more a rapture takes hold of me how newly-constructed words fly from their lips, which they themselves create so simply, so naturally, without any anxiety. As though they came straight from their mother’s bellies with the language.
The Shabbos peace in the streets of Jerusalem also enters into me and relieves my suddenly-arrived physical uncertainty. It puts me in a more active mood. I hold, walking, a sort of dialogue with myself which, in actuality, needs to be the dialogue that I will soon have with Ben Gurion. With myself, it isn’t a dialogue at all, but rather a monologue. I walk through the streets of Jerusalem and speak to myself:
‘Would you want — here, as you walk, as you stroll through the streets of Jerusalem — would you want to go and jump, leap directly into the days of Joshua Ben Nun? Is that what you want? — No, I would not want that. But what precisely does it mean to leap over and leap into? This means — not only you, yourself, should do it, but the whole people. Particularly the whole people of the State of Israel. The entire two million Jews, both the long-settled and the newly-arrived. The people, who have behind them two Khurbns,2 two thousand years of wandering and life in all the states of the world, and a third Hitler-Khurbn. And on and on. And now their own state. What, then, does the age of Joshua Ben Nun mean now? Can one go today, like Joshua Ben Nun, and meet with the twelve tribes? Can one? And what will the six million Jews of the Americas do? Can they also take a leap — where? Ben Gurion, head of the Israeli government, is not a man who wishes to merely play with a phrase. He is a man with with an awareness of fate as well as an awareness of history. How can he see the image of how a people like ours leaps out of the present day and leaps into the days of more than three thousand years ago? It isn’t important to me if I ask him it or not — but how does it stand to reason, let us say: to my reason — right now, as I walk through the streets of new Jerusalem, and in my pocket lies a little book with green covers: An American passport, and in my heart the name of the prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz, sings feverishly? — Does the name of Joshua Ben Nun also sing in me? No. Joshua Ben Nun doesn’t sing in me, doesn’t tremble feverishly in me. — And how does the American passport match in my spirit with the strange, almost mystical joy of mine that I tread on the earth where Isaiah walked? — I wrote a poem about this. Isaiah’s name sings in me. But can I explain it? Can I, with all of me, enter the joy that here, on the same earth, once walked Isaiah? And why should I want to feel any differently than that my feet touch upon the same earth which Isaiah touched upon? And what is it — if not like Isaiah? — If not like like Isaiah, Jerusalem is, it seems, not Jerusalem?… Look, over there, not far at all from the street where you now walk, on the other side of the Mandelbaum Gate,3 stands the old ruined wall, the Western Wall. Twenty years ago, you saw it. And now you can’t see it.4 The old wall, which lived with all the Jews of the world through two thousand years of their destined life. Does it wish to leap over itself? Can it leap away from all the kisses which Jews, over the span of generations, have lain upon it and wept and dreamed into it?…Shh. See — here walks on the other side of the street a man wrapped up all the way to his head, almost, in strange wrappings, and he walks as through in a dream and holds one hand outstretched. — Who is he? Who is he?..’
I give a start and a stand in in the middle of the street, speaking to myself, and something gives a flash past me. Could it indeed be a dizzy spell? — No, everything is fine. Fine. Here is Ben Gurion’s house now. A guard soldier stands by the entrance. Only from obligation of security. I say my name and I go freely into the house where Ben Gurion’s wife5 greets me with a question: And where is your wife? I tell her that the invitation was explicitly only for men. She bursts into laughter and makes fun of the invitation: What an idea — everyone completely without their wives! And she laments the inviting of only the men! — But hopeless. — Ben Gurion himself greets me and a few others who have just arrived. He greets heartily, with a smiling face. Dressed, as is his custom, in an over-shirt with an open collar, without a tie. Come at the same time as me I see Professor Mordecai Kaplan, Professor J. Heschel, Bezalel Sherman,6 Marie Syrkin.7 — I understand now that I am in the company of our American conference delegation. And here I also encounter, already in the house, Z. Shazar and Professor Martin Buber,8 permanent Jerusalemites.
In a few moments, all the invited were there. Ten, twelve, people.
Without official ceremony, comfortably, family-like, all sit in a semi-circle around Ben Gurion. Mrs Ben Gurion serves refreshments on a little table in the semi-circle: Fruit, wine, lekach9 and coffee. There begins an informal conversation. And immediately it turns in a direction which I had not at all anticipated.
In the conversation, which gradually removed the chains from itself, there was not from anyone, nor Ben Gurion, a word mentioned about the conference which had only just finished two days ago and at which there was so energetically discussed Ben Gurion’s position regarding Zionism and Jewish history; I had a feeling that Ben Gurion didn’t desire, at this private gathering at his house, to go into the heart of that argument again. He turned the conversation, almost unintentionally, entirely down a philosophical/religious line. It happened, as if on its own accord, the conversation about God, about His attitude to Man, about His power over Man and, conversely, about the attitude of Man to the Creator. I derive a unsettling question from the conversation: Was an intimate revelation of God indeed once possible and is it also possible today, if Man can indeed sometimes achieve truly seeing God in the flesh, to feel upon himself God’s touch, contact — truly feel it in the flesh, and indeed look God in the face? The abstract sending of God is not enough, as one really senses Him in longing for Him. Real indeed?…So, approximately, in as much as I recall, went the meditation. More or less everyone was drawn into the conversation, but most of all Professor Martin Buber. It seemed to me that this was what Ben Gurion set out to do: to draw Buber further into the conversation. Professor Buber allowed it. Of course, such a conversation could lead to no result, apart from being able to give the opportunity for thought to flash here and there. To gleam and then to be veiled again in vagueness, in a momentary improvisation which could lead to no answer at all.
Because who, I think, at the time of the action, can answer such a speculative question? Who and how? Because if someone had seen God, not in a symbolic vision, but in an intimate, face-to-face manner — how could they describe it and relate it to another that the second person also should see it? How can they reveal it directly and in full detail to another? Because as soon as he reveals it, it becomes unrevealed. A person can only feel such a thing in themself, in a personal moment of revelation — in a revelation in themself, which must remain closed in the sealed-off light of the personal revelation. That someone should open the mystery for you, give you, so to speak, a ready key to it — this is not possible and not conceivable. I listened to the meditations, also, at the end, participating myself — and the entire time I thought: Just look what people desire — nothing else but to uncover the secret of how to see God face to face and to truly hear God’s voice! And if not?
My interpolation perhaps had no direct connection to the matter which Ben Gurion touched upon, but indirectly, it did have a connection. I was under the sway of of the ideas which had overwhelmed me on the way, going to Ben Gurion’s house, when I wanted to feel the essence of treading on the same earth where Isaiah one walked. And I asked myself and everyone: From where does that desire come? Is Jerusalem not Jerusalem? Yes, even now the earth of Jerusalem is Isaiah’s earth, and it depends on us that it should truly be so, we should not need to leap over anything.
My words, it seems, did not come out so clearly as I had intended. On one hand, it pleased me that Ben Gurion, as a host, had avoided speaking about the actual, crucial problems of our current times so as not to introduce any harshness into the gathering; on the other hand, I felt that something was lacking, that something remained intentionally unraised, unsaid, and a sorrow began to settle in me. And over all this, I felt a strange flashing before my eyes and a sort of rushing in my temples.
It was already evening when we left Ben Gurion’s home. Walking through the streets, Z. Shazar, Martin Buber and J. Heschel all stopped a while and continued the conversation. I went with them a short ways and left them. I wanted to go back to the hotel faster. I didn’t wish to tell them that I felt physically unwell.
It was quite a long way to the hotel. I couldn’t get a taxi and I didn’t want to spent too long searching for one, in truth. The Shabbos evening lay spread in its full end-of-day restful beauty over all the streets, and as hard as it was to walk, I felt a particular happiness that I walked with slow step amongst groups of strollers which had at evening ventured into the streets like a parade. The heaviness, though, of my step, gave me, all the more and more, the feeling that I must reach my hotel all the more quickly. All the more quickly.
H. Leivick, Tog, 28 December, 1957
Onward to Part 9
The Mandelbaum Gate.
That meeting in 1950 was slightly more fraught than Leivick admits here — the issue of a daily newspaper in Yiddish in Israel being allowed was raised. And Ben Gurion responded that such a thing wouldn’t be possible, even though he had amended his opinions regarding younger generations knowing some Yiddish.
Destruction, often specific to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Also used to refer to the Holocaust/Shoah in Yiddish
The crossing between Jordanian-controlled and Israeli-controlled Jerusalem. Leivick had been able to visit the Kotel — the Western Wall — on his first trip to Jerusalem in 1937, but not on subsequent visits.
Actually, the story of his visit to the Kotel in 1937 fascinates me. He goes and immediately feels as though he must leave, that the stones are going to suffocate/crush him. At night, he decides to go back and see them again— and is stopped by the ghost of Yosef Haim Brenner. The ghost tells him he can only go once. And so it was, apparently.
Paula Ben Gurion. She deserves named here, as does Leivick’s own wife, Soreh.
Jewish sociologist.
Writer, educator, Zionist activist
Martin Buber of the ‘I-and-Thou’ thesis of existence and relationship between Man and God. Between him and the other attendees — such as Rabbi Heschel, who would later march with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Kaplan, who co-founded Reconstructionist Judaism — it would have been a fascinating gathering there in Ben Gurion’s living room.
Traditional honey cake.