Painting Menachem Begin in Shades of Gray

Daniel Gordis’s acclaimed new biography aims to redeem Israel’s most controversial prime minister

Watch Daniel Gordis, author of the new biography Menachem Begin: The Battle for Israel’s Soul, discuss Begin’s life, political vision, and legacy at the Tikvah Center in New York City.

 

From the Introduction to Menachem Begin: The Battle for Israel’s Soul

All of Israel’s founders made extraordinary journeys, but it is hard to imagine any of them enduring an odyssey anything like Begin’s. He fled the Nazis, lost his parents and brother, was imprisoned by the Soviets and hunted by the British. Condemned by Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt in the pages of The New York Times, scorned by Israel’s political elites, portrayed by many as a demagogue, and relegated to the political opposition for twenty-eight years, he served as prime minister for six years, and in that time made peace with Egypt, received the Nobel Peace Prize, and destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor. He also led Israel into its most unpopular war, resigned as a result of the war’s dark course before his term was completed, and went into seclusion for almost a decade. An orator who thrived on crowds, he was almost never seen or heard from again

When he died, though, tens of thousands of people chocked the streets of Jerusalem, desperate to make their way to the Mount of Olives, where he was buried. They hadn’t forgotten him. They wanted to say good-bye. And they wanted to thank him.

To thank him for what? What was it that Menachem Begin evoked in Israelis and in Jews worldwide? Loved by many, reviled by others, his life and the principles to which he was committed touched something profound in Jews almost everywhere. The key to Begin’s abiding grip on the memory and fascination of Israelis and Jews around the world was bound up with his unabashed, utter devotion to the Jewish people. Committed to Israel though he was, Menachem Begin’s life was a story of commitment first and foremost to the Jewish people. Many of Israel’s founders Hebraized their names (Ben-Gurion actually required diplomatic personnel and civil servants above a rank to do so²). David Ben-Gurion was born David Grün. Ariel Sharon’s original last name was Scheinermann. Golda Meir had been Golda Meyerson. But Menachem Begin did not change his name. His Jewish roots were the only roots that he needed or wanted; when called upon to testify before a commission of the Knesset toward the end of his life, and asked to state his name, he answered, simply, “Menachem ben Dov ve-Chasia Begin.” It was not an Israeli name, but a Jewish one. It was a reminder that Israel mattered only if the Jews mattered. He never became the toned and bronzed Israeli in the new tradition of Dayan, Sharon, or Yitzhak Rabin, nor a self-invented member of the old guard like Ben-Gurion. He had no need for that. His devotion to Israel was an irrepressible facet of the European Jew he had always been, and unlike many of Israel’s founders, he saw no reason to leave that tradition or legacy behind.

In the age of the “new Jew,” Begin carried with him a fierce pride in what he had inherited. The love that Israelis and Jews around the world felt for him, regardless of what they may have thought of his policies, derived in large measure from his having reminded them who they were and would always be.

This book is the story of Menachem Begin’s life, but it is also the story of what he evoked in Jews, of what he said to the world about Jewish history and the Jewish people, and of the legacy he bequeathed to the state he was instrumental in creating.

 

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