Age Is Not an Impediment to Visiting Israel, David Ben-Gurion Argues

November 21, 1969

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Age Is Not an Impediment to Visiting Israel, David Ben-Gurion Argues
Autograph Letter Signed
1 page | SMC 771

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  • David Ben-Gurion

    Background

    Citing the examples of the biblical Sarah at age 127, and Sir Moses Montefiore at 91, Ben-Gurion urges a woman in her late 80's to visit Israel and see the progress made.
    Autograph Letter Signed ("D. Ben-Gurion"), in English, 1 page, octavo, Sdeh Boker, Israel, November 21, 1969. To Mrs. Archibald Silverman in Rhode Island.
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    48
    Sdeh Boker, 21.11.69

    My dear Mrs. Archibald Silverman

    I share completely your hope to see again Israel.  Moses Mantifyore [sic] came to Israel the seventh time when he was 91, and you're much younger - only 87, and I awaiting you to show you the progress we are making even in the desert.

    Is there in four years such a big difference?  Our mother Sara lived until 127 years.  So you may have another forty years to live.

    Be strong and don't give in!

    Yours

    D. BEN-GURION

    25 Channing Ave.
    Providence, R.I. 02906
    U.S.A.

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    Historic Context
    David Ben-Gurion

    Private David Ben-Gurion, a volunteer in the Jewish Legion, 1918: Wikimedia Commons

    David Ben-Gurion

    David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973) was the first prime minister of the State of Israel, and one of the country’s main founders. David Gru¨¨n was born in 1886 in Plonsk, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. His father was a member of the Zionist Hibbat Zion movement, and his mother passed away when David was eleven years old. When Ben-Gurion was fourteen, he helped establish the religious Zionist youth movement Ezra with two friends. He joined the Poalei Zion workers movement in 1905 whilst a student at Warsaw University. The following year, he emigrated to the Ottoman Mutasafirate of Jerusalem, working in his idealized role of the agricultural laborer. In 1911, Ben-Gurion went to Thessaloniki to study Turkish in order to enroll in law school in Constantinople the following year. Three years later, in 1915, he was deported from the Ottoman Empire for his Zionist activities and made his way to New York, where he met and married his Russian-immigrant wife, Paula, in 1917. Shortly after his marriage, Ben-Gurion enlisted in the Jewish Legion to help liberate Palestine from the Turks. In 1920, he and some colleagues founded the Histadrut as a forerunner of a Jewish government, and actively lobbied for more Jewish immigration - especially from America. By 1930, various labor organizations and movements had banded together to form Mapai, with Ben-Gurion at its helm. Five years later, Ben-Gurion was also the head of the Zionist Executive and the Jewish Agency. Ben-Gurion famously read the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May of 1948 and became Israel’s first Prime Minister and Minister of Defence. He served as Prime minister from 1948-1953 and again from 1955 until he resigned in 1963. Ben-Gurion retired from public life in 1970 and died in 1973. He is interred on the grounds of his home in Sde Boker, in the south of Israel.

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