“The Future of Israel Lies in the Negev”

June 20, 2009

Sde Boker, a kibbutz founded in 1952, became the retirement residence for David Ben-Gurion and his wife, Paula. Ben-Gurion lived the last 10 years of his life, until his death in 1973, on this small kibbutz, living out his assertion that the future of Israel was in its mastering of the Negev. According to Ben-Gurion, “The desert provides us with the best opportunity to begin again. This is a vital element of our renaissance in Israel. For it is in mastering nature that man learns to control himself. It is in this sense, more practical than mystic, that I define our Redemption on this land. Israel must continue to cultivate its nationality and to represent the Jewish people without renouncing its glorious past. It must earn this – which is no small task – a right that can only be acquired in the desert.”

Miri and Noam accompanied us to the kibbutz is about 40 minutes south of Beer Sheva. The surrounding landscape is the dry, rocky, mountainous, craggy, glaring, hot Negev, but walking through the entrance to the kibbutz takes one into a canopy of refreshing trees and shrubs. The building are little more than quonset huts, bungalows, on the outside. What is striking about Ben-Gurion’s that has been preserved as a museum is how simply he lived in his last years. While a fierce lion as a politician and builder of the State of Israel, his house reflects not wealth and comfort, but books, and artifacts from his many world contacts. While it certainly was a different era, Ben-Gurion's final years contrast mightily with the circumstances of Olmert who had set up a private consulting firm within days of departing the Prime Minister’s office. Ben-Gurion and his wife are buried not far from the kibbutz on a site that he had selected, a cliff overlooking a spectacular view of the challenging, searing Negev stretching out to the east and the south. The clarity, the heat, the intense silence of the desert are as magnetic.

Beer Sheva and points south really do have the feel of the wild west from the 19th century U.S. While there may be laws and regulations that govern development and political relationships, it’s not clear who enforces them or how they are enforced. For example, there are many unrecognized Bedouin villages, some with hundreds of residents, made wretched by lack of access to utilities like water and electricity. There appear to be many ranches/farms that have been developed by what may be homesteaders. There are some gorgeous orchards occasionally dotting the landscape. For lunch we stopped at a small goat farm perched on a ridge. The restaurant, which specializes in cheese dishes, apparently was prohibited from building a new structure, so they brought in an old railroad car, cut out the walls on three sides, installed glass to allow spectacular desert views and have developed what appears to be a thriving business.

I hope that Rachel enjoyed spending this time with young Jewish adults like herself, working hard to make the world a better place