Ben-Gurion Day: The Name He Gave Himself

Every year on the sixth of Kislev, Israel marks Ben-Gurion Day in honor of David Ben-Gurion, the country's first Prime Minister and the man who was a central figure in turning a 2,000-year-old hope into a modern state.

The date is his own. The sixth of Kislev is the Hebrew date on which he died, in 1973, and the Knesset later fixed it in law as a national day of remembrance, marked in state institutions, on army bases, and in schools around the country. When the sixth of Kislev falls on a Friday or on Shabbat, the day is observed on the Sunday that follows.

The Name He Chose

David Ben-Gurion was born David Grün, a young Zionist idealist from Plonsk, Poland. Early in his life he chose a new Hebrew name for himself: Ben-Gurion. He took it from the Gurion family of Second Temple Jerusalem, and biographers usually point to Joseph ben Gurion, who helped lead the city in the first stage of the revolt against Rome.

The Gurions were one of the great lay families of Jerusalem in those years, wealthy, civic-minded, and remembered less for what they owned than for what they did with it. Josephus names them among the men who tried to hold the city together in its last days, and both Joseph and his fellow leader were murdered by the Zealots for it.

The Talmud also remembers another member of the same house, Nakdimon ben Gurion, as one of the wealthiest and most respected men in Jerusalem, and highlights his extraordinary acts of charity during times of crisis.

Many identify this Nakdimon with the Nicodemus of the New Testament, and according to one tradition he, rather than Joseph, is the man David Grün named himself after.

In the New Testament, he is the one who came to Yeshua by night, seeking understanding, asking sincere spiritual questions, and later showing quiet courage by helping prepare Yeshua's body for burial. In both the New Testament and in Jewish tradition he is a figure marked by moral seriousness, humility, and profound generosity.

Builder of a State

Ben-Gurion carried that spirit into the 20th century. He had come to the land in 1906 as a farm laborer, and within a few decades he was the central architect of Jewish independence: the leader of the Yishuv, the head of the Jewish Agency, and ultimately Israel's first Prime Minister. When he declared independence on May 14, 1948, he was giving voice to the longing of generations.

He never pretended that any of it was ordinary. Years later, in a television interview, he summed up the whole improbable enterprise in a single line: "In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles."

The state he declared had to be built while it was defending itself. Ben-Gurion served as Prime Minister and Minister of Defense from 1948 to 1954, and again from 1955 to 1963, and much of what Israel still runs on took shape in those years. He merged the underground fighting forces into one national army, the IDF, insisting that a state could have only one. His governments passed the Law of Return in 1950, giving every Jew in the world the right to come home, and then made good on it: immigration from the displaced persons camps of Europe and from the Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa more than doubled the population within a few years. Transit camps and new towns, free compulsory education, and the basic machinery of a government were all put in place under enormous pressure and with very little money.

A Vision for the Negev

What he cared about most, though, was the Negev. More than half of the country's land lies south of Be'er Sheva, and Ben-Gurion was convinced that Israel's future would be decided there. The desert, he said, was where the creativity and the pioneering spirit of the Jewish people would be put to the test. He also refused to let that stay a speech. In 1953 he left the government and moved with his wife Paula to Sde Boker, a young kibbutz in the middle of the Negev, where they lived in a small wooden hut like any other members. He was back in office by 1955, led the country through the Sinai Campaign of 1956, stepped down for the last time in 1963, and left political life altogether in 1970. Each time, he went back to the same hut in the desert.

The vision outlived him. The university founded in Be'er Sheva in 1969 to develop the region was renamed Ben-Gurion University of the Negev after his death, and its campus near Sde Boker now holds his archives along with Israel's institutes for desert research. Paula died in 1968 and was buried on a cliff a few kilometers south of the kibbutz, looking out over the Wilderness of Zin. Ben-Gurion asked to be laid to rest beside her rather than in Jerusalem, and that is where the two of them lie today, with the desert he believed in spread out below.

A Lifelong Student

Beyond politics, Ben-Gurion was a man of voracious curiosity. He taught himself ancient Greek because he wanted to read the foundational texts, including the New Testament, in their original language. Until several years ago, visitors to his home in Sde Boker could still see the Greek New Testament lying on his nightstand.

Each year, as Ben-Gurion Day is marked, the people of Israel remember a leader whose vision reached backward into Jewish history and forward into Israel's future, a man who combined courage with humility, tradition with innovation, and an unwavering belief in the destiny of the Jewish people.

May his legacy continue to inspire wisdom, hope, and strength.