Ben-Gurion House, on the corner of Ben-Gurion Boulevard in Tel Aviv, was the private home of David Ben-Gurion, the founder and first prime minister of Israel, from 1931 until his death in 1973 (with intervals when he lived at Sde Boker in the Negev). The house is preserved as a museum, and its most remarkable feature is the library: 20,000 books in multiple languages that reveal the intellectual world of a leader who read as voraciously as he governed.
The Library
Ben-Gurion’s library fills every room of the house. The books cover philosophy, history, science, religion, military strategy, Buddhism, Greek literature, and Zionist thought. Ben-Gurion taught himself Greek to read Plato in the original. He studied Buddhist philosophy. He read scientific journals. The breadth of his interests, visible in the spines of 20,000 books, paints a portrait of a leader who believed that governing a nation required understanding the world in its entirety.
Modest Life
The house itself is modest: a small apartment in a Bauhaus building, with simple furniture, no luxury, and the atmosphere of a scholar’s study rather than a head of state’s residence. Ben-Gurion’s bedroom, his desk, and his personal items are preserved, and the simplicity of the space reflects the man who declared a state and then went home to read.
Visit with Hoshen Tours
Ben-Gurion House is where the founder of Israel comes to life as a person. Hoshen Tours visits the library and tells the story of the reader who built a nation.