Ceremony Launches Commemoration of Ben Gurion Centennial in the U.S.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Binyamin Netanyahu, Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek and New York City Mayor Edward Koch shared their personal memories of Israel’s first Premier, David Ben Gurion, in a ceremony here Tuesday to kick off America’s commemoration of the Ben Gurion centennial.

To celebrate the 100th birthday anniversary of the man credited with leading the Jews to statehood, the David Ben Gurion Centennial Committee of the U.S. has planned seminars, multi-media presentations, educational exhibits and a May 20 culminating bash in Washington, D.C.

President Reagan has agreed to serve as honorary chairman of the Centennial Committee and numerous Congressmen also have signed on.

The celebration will begin in New York on October 16 at the Jewish Museum with a presentation on the American media and Ben Gurion. Allon Ben Gurion, Ben Gurion’s grandson, will attend the ceremony and an interview of Ben Gurion by the renowned journalist Edward R. Murrow will be presented. Koch said a street in mid-Manhattan will be renamed for Ben Gurion to commemorate the centennial.

Tuesday’s ceremony, the first public announcement of the centennial in America, featured reminiscences about Ben Gurion.

Kollek was with Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Navon and Moshe Dayan, one of Ben Gurion’s proteges and closest companions. He said Ben Gurion’s task was the most difficult faced by any statesman of the 20th century, creating a state with a tiny population against great odds.

The Zionist idea in the days of Ben Gurion did not have the virtually universal approval of world Jewry as it does today, Kollek said. He recognized the clash between traditional Judaism, and a modern state and searched fo the compromises, Kollek said.

But Kollek focused mainly on Ben Gurion the intellectual. He recalled a trip to America about 40 years ago when he and Ben Gurion visited Albert Einstein at Princeton University.

Einstein and Ben Gurion talked only philosophy for hours Kollek said. The two discussed the possibility of replacing the human brain with computers and Ben Gurion said nothing could replace human initiative. Both acknowledged the idea of a supreme body, a unity that governed the university.

Ben Gurion’s interest in philosophy and particularly in Buddhism took him some years later to a Burmese Buddhist monastery where he isolated himself for almost eight weeks, Kollek said. He brought with him only his secretary and body guard. “The world has changed since then,” he said.

One of the great disappointments of Ben Gurion’s life, Kollek said, was the failure of Israeli youth to follow his example of settling the Negev.

Netanyahu, who broke away from the opening day of the UN General Assembly to attend the ceremony, recalled Ben Gurion’s disdain for the international body. Nevertheless, he said, “BenGurion understood the importance of alliances.”