Many years ago, my father took me on my first trip to Israel as a Bar Mitzvah present. He was a big macher with Israel Bonds, raising substantial sums for them; so, we were given an appointment to meet with David Ben-Gurion privately for a few moments. Ben-Gurion was of advanced aged, but he was still sharp as a tack.



The author as a young man with David Ben-Gurion.

He told me that the future for Israel depended on three things:


1. Bringing more Jews to Israel.


2. Increasing the agriculture all over Israel.


3. Increasing the area where Jews lived in the land.


Although I am now 50 and, as a frum Jew, I have read much about Ben-Gurion and his life that would persuade me not to quote him, I am struck by how the Left has abandoned his philosophy. G-d has an amazing sense of humour that one can only marvel at. The political Right has taken up the cause of the earliest anti-religious pioneers, whose philosophy is now an anathema to the Left. The Left has abandoned Ben-Gurion's ideas and ideals, leaving only the frum and the political Right to inherit his agenda.


And while most Israelis are now focused on a hi-tech future instead of agriculture, the rising prices of basic foodstuffs is turning grain farmers into oil barons. Although Israel may not yet sense this shift in fortunes, it is certainly apparent here in Canada, especially in the farm province of Saskatchewan.


Gush Katif, now bare and destroyed, would have fed thousands and brought large amounts of foreign exchange dollars into the economy. Instead of increasing agriculture and settling more land, the government of Israel has evicted thousands of Jews from the land and reduced the acreage under cultivation; David Ben Gurion would surely not have allowed this under his reign.


This year, I took my own son to Israel for his Bar Mitzvah. On Thursday, he read his parsha, Kedoshim, at the Western Wall. It was Yom HaShoah and when we finished our service, the sirens sounded for a minute of silence. We mentally traveled from the fires of Auschwitz to the sacredness of the Temple Mount wall, and suddenly we were singing VaShuvu Bunim.


We spent Shabbos in Hevron with 85 Torontonians who had previously made Aliyah. Clearly, the singing and praying at the site of our great-great-great-etc. grandparents' tomb was an experience my son would never forget. The spirit at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron was so thick you could touch it. Truly, our cup overflowed with joy.
 
During our stay in Hevron we were able to take a tour of the casbah and see where Jews lived before being evicted by the British in 1927. We saw the doorways of homes where mezuzahs had once lain in carved-out doorpost

G-d has an amazing sense of humour.

stones. All these Jewish homes are now occupied by Arabs, not Jews. Jews are forbidden by the government from living in those areas, where there were once mikvehs, shuls and kolels.


There is a waiting list of Jews who want to move into Hevron. The government, however, does not allow Jews to build or to reside in most of the buildings that Jews historically lived in and owned for hundreds of years. And yet, if one glances over to the Arab areas of Hevron, the sounds of construction are unrelenting. Arab houses and office buildings go up quickly and without protest, where Jews can only dream.


Although my son did not have the opportunity to meet with a prime minister, as I once did, I wondered, while he was reading the Torah, if his son would have the chance to read his parsha in Hevron.


David Ben-Gurion would most certainly have wanted my grandson to have that opportunity. I pray Prime Minister Ehud Olmert does not take it away.


May HaShem send us a Zionist speedily, in our days.