Dr. Renana Ben Gurion Leshem, daughter of Israel’s first Prime Minister, accepted an award here Sunday night in tribute to her father’s devotion to “making the desert bloom.” The King Solomon Award of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation was presented to Leshem at Carnegie Hall by violin virtuoso Isaac Stern on the occasion of the centennial observation of Ben Gurion’s birth.
During a first-rate concert by the Israel Sinfonietta of Beersheba under the baton of music director and conductor Mendi Rodan, Leshem accepted the award for her father, saying, “This evening goes a long way toward fulfilling my father’s dreams that they rely only on the will of people to be realized.”
She noted that the Israel Sinfonietta was a product of the Negev whose blossoming was her father’s dream. Leshem, a biologist, recalled her father saying that “if we don’t conquer the desert, the desert will conquer us.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
