David Ben-Gurion (photo: Boris Carmi) and Jacob Talmon (Jacob Talmon Archive)
Jacob L. Talmon or J.L. Talmon (1916 – 1980) was one of the most influential historians ever to teach at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
An entire generation of scholars passed through his classrooms. Many later recalled a single observation, a passing remark from one of his lectures, that set them on the path they would follow for the rest of their academic careers. Yet despite his stature as a public intellectual, Talmon’s political and Zionist activities have often been overshadowed by the work that made him internationally renowned instead: his studies of radical ideologies, political messianism, and totalitarianism.
Part of the reason is that some of his most ambitious Zionist projects either never came to fruition or proved surprisingly short-lived. Many of his essays were written for immediate political debates and were never collected in book form. He became embroiled in a dispute with the Chaim Weizmann Archives after another author was chosen ahead of him to write the official biography of Israel’s first president. Much of his work during the 1940s, produced under the auspices of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, remained internal memoranda or journalism intended for the moment.
Yet perhaps the most intriguing unfinished project of all was a biography of David Ben-Gurion.
The broad outlines of the story are already known to many. But documents preserved in the Jacob Talmon Archive at the National Library of Israel shed fresh light on the relationship between the historian and the statesman – and on the reasons why the book was never written.
Talmon admired Ben-Gurion. Although he was neither a socialist nor a man of the political left, and was intellectually far closer to liberal traditions, he regarded Ben-Gurion as an extraordinary leader – the individual more responsible than any other for the establishment of the State of Israel. For Talmon, that achievement transcended ideological differences.
When the two men met in 1957, Ben-Gurion described the historian in less than flattering terms: “He looks like a Polish yeshiva student, but is an important scholar.”
Despite this, he was receptive to the idea Talmon raised during their meeting: to write the story of Zionist settlement and the State of Israel through a biography centered on Ben-Gurion himself.
By 1959, as Talmon was completing work on his landmark study Political Messianism, discussions about the proposed biography began to move from aspiration to reality.
In June 1960, the historian and the prime minister began corresponding directly about the conditions under which the project would proceed.
Talmon had four requirements.
He wanted unrestricted access to all documents in Ben-Gurion’s possession. He expected the prime minister’s full cooperation throughout the research process. He insisted that the work adhere to the principles of historical scholarship, subject only to genuine considerations of national security. And he demanded sole ownership of the book’s rights.
To safeguard the independence of the project, Talmon proposed an arbitration mechanism should disputes arise. The panel, he suggested, would consist of the president of the Hebrew University, the president of the Supreme Court (or alternatively the minister of justice), and the speaker of the Knesset (or the state comptroller).
According to Talmon’s later recollections, this was the moment the project began to unravel.
Ben-Gurion was in agreement that Talmon should write the biography. But he insisted on retaining the final say over what material could be published.
“All the material preserved in my archives will be placed at your disposal,” Ben-Gurion wrote, “on the clear condition that you publish nothing that, in my opinion [the original document emphasized] would harm security or the dignity of individuals. On this matter I cannot accept arbitration; my judgment must be decisive, so long as I bear governmental responsibility for the security of the state.”
Ben-Gurion assured Talmon that he would not abuse his authority. Talmon was not convinced – at least at first.
He sought advice from colleagues, among them the distinguished historian Lewis Namier, who was more sympathetic to Ben-Gurion’s position. Namier wrote, “I myself in his position would not have accepted arbitration on such points.”
For Namier, this was simply one of the unavoidable complications of writing the biography of a living statesman.
Talmon nevertheless continued to advance the project. Together with representatives of Mapai, the Labor Zionist party, plans were made for a board of trustees that would oversee the undertaking and guarantee appropriate conditions for its completion. It was agreed that no part of the manuscript would be published before the book itself appeared, and Talmon even expressed a willingness to return a portion of the royalties to the fund financing the project.
In the end, however, the negotiations collapsed. After further discussions over copyright, contracts, and scholarly independence, Talmon withdrew from the project altogether.
His resignation letter was drafted on December 18, 1960, but was not mailed until two days later, a small detail that perhaps hints at his deliberation.
In the letter, Talmon explained that “it is impossible to undertake the reconstruction of the most important period in Jewish history since the destruction of the Second Temple – while at its center stands the individual whom history itself has assigned this role –without guaranteed access to every relevant document, without exception, and without full assurances that the historian will enjoy complete freedom to render judgment according to the dictates of his scholarly conscience.”
Ben-Gurion accepted the explanation. More than that, he expressed respect for it.
In all likelihood, however, this was not the only reason Talmon abandoned the project. Had access to archival materials been the central issue, he could have withdrawn months earlier, when the matter first arose. More likely, another conflict was pushing him toward that decision – a conflict that was unfolding at precisely the same time as the negotiations over the biography itself.
The Lavon Affair.
This crisis centered around Operation Susannah, a failed covert operation in 1954, in which Israeli operatives were meant to plant bombs in Egypt and blame it on other parties. With the suspected operatives arrested, the botched plan was known in Israel as “the Unfortunate Affair.”
Ben-Gurion was convinced that Pinhas Lavon, defense minister at the time, was responsible for what happened.
After Ben-Gurion demanded a formal judicial inquiry, the government reached a compromise and established what became known as the Committee of Seven – a panel of seven cabinet ministers charged with examining the allegations.
The committee ultimately concluded that Lavon had not authorized the operation. But Ben-Gurion rejected its findings. In his view, the committee had no authority to determine guilt or innocence in the first place.
To many observers, this was deeply troubling. Whether Lavon was guilty or not was almost beside the point. The government itself had established the committee. If the prime minister could simply refuse to accept its conclusions – and in doing so undermine both the committee and the ministers who served on it – then the rules seemed to change according to the will of a single individual.
Talmon and many of his colleagues saw this behavior as a dangerous sign. Until then, Talmon had largely avoided involvement in day-to-day Israeli politics. In fact, only months earlier, a friend had reproached him for failing to join others of note and sign a public petition on a separate issue, writing:
“I simply cannot believe that Bergmann, Eisenstadt, Simon, or Tur-Sinai possess more conscience or willingness to help than Talmon!… Perhaps those who circulated the petition among university faculty thought Talmon was beyond hope.”
It’s possible that criticisms like these – suggesting that he remained silent when public intervention was needed – played some role in what happened next.
Only days after withdrawing from the Ben-Gurion biography project, Talmon joined a group of leading intellectuals in signing a public declaration condemning the prime minister’s conduct:
“We, the undersigned, consider it our duty to express our profound concern regarding the destructive effect that the events of recent months have had on public attitudes in general, and on the younger generation in particular… Israeli society is undergoing a crisis of confidence. Large segments of public opinion have come to believe that the proper functioning of institutions subject to public oversight is steadily deteriorating. Many citizens are alarmed by the escalating polemics and factionalism, seeing in the clashes among leaders not a principled disagreement or a struggle over ideas, but a contest for positions of power.”
Talmon soon expressed similar views in his own name. This was hardly surprising. Remember, his most influential scholarly work examined what he called “totalitarian democracy” – the process by which appeals to the people’s will can become a justification for concentrating power in the hands of a party, a movement, or even a single leader claiming to embody that will.
In an interview published in early 1961, he warned:
“The attempt to overturn a government decision – one that approved the report of a committee of seven ministers representing all coalition parties – has the effect of discrediting the government as a whole, including its leader. If decisions of this kind can be reversed within a matter of days, there is no longer any guarantee that thoughtful long-term planning can endure.”
And yet Talmon never stopped admiring Ben-Gurion. That is what makes this story so remarkable.
Even at the height of the controversy, Talmon continued to insist that Ben-Gurion was one of the greatest leaders in Jewish history.
In his Haaretz essay “The Affair – A Turning Point?”, he described him as “not merely a politician or statesman, but a visionary capable of seeing events from the perspective of generations.”
The Lavon Affair was a stain. It was not, however, enough to erase what Talmon called the “Ben-Gurion legend.”
“David Ben-Gurion will occupy a place among the half-dozen most decisive figures in the history of the Jewish people since its emergence as a nation. Few statesmen in history possessed such certainty in their historical vision, and few have been vindicated by events so many times. Yet, as often happens to visionary statesmen, there comes a day of reckoning. The gods grow jealous, and then a fatal error is made.”
Talmon’s argument was not that Ben-Gurion’s achievements should be forgotten. Quite the opposite. They should be preserved. That was why he urged him to leave political life before further damage was done to the legacy he had spent decades building.
Not surprisingly, Ben-Gurion, rejected the advice. He believed Talmon had jumped to conclusions before examining the evidence.
“Talmon writes about Napoleon only after conducting research,” he remarked. “Yet in the matter of the Affair, he passes judgment without investigating.”
Talmon sent him a letter that was almost apologetic in tone, explaining that his criticism had stemmed from “deep concern for the historical standing of that very figure to whom I was ultimately prepared to devote the best years of my life in order to commemorate him.”
Ben-Gurion responded with unusual sharpness. “That ‘particular figure’ is concerned for you as a historian. A person truly concerned with the truth would not act in this way… You have done serious damage to your craft, not to ‘that figure.’ And that is regrettable.”
Even when the two men met several weeks later, at a gathering between Ben-Gurion and the academics who had publicly opposed him, Ben-Gurion was unwilling to listen to him or anyone else in the room. According to the meeting’s minutes, Ben-Gurion spoke almost continuously for some fifteen minutes before anyone else managed to get in a word.
The Lavon Affair would leave a lasting mark on Ben-Gurion’s political career. He alienated allies, strained relationships within his own party, and lost the confidence of many voters who, like Talmon, saw in his conduct a troubling red flag.
Talmon’s career, on the other hand, moved in the other direction. The controversy helped transform him from a distinguished academic into a more visible public intellectual. He participated in the founding conference of the Liberal Party – though he was careful to note that he was not a member – and after 1967 emerged as one of Israel’s most prominent critics of government policy in the territories and toward the Arab population living there.
Ironically, it was on this issue that Talmon and Ben-Gurion would find points of agreement.
Ben-Gurion himself expressed surprise that Talmon continued to write about him with such sympathy: “He divides the Zionist era into two periods – the Weizmann era and the Ben-Gurion era – and writes about me without anger and without hatred.”
By 1970, the passions surrounding the Lavon Affair had largely faded. That year Talmon published his essay The Six-Day War in Historical Perspective, arguing that Israel should end its rule over the territories captured in 1967. Ben-Gurion agreed with much of what he wrote, though qualified by what he saw as Israel’s exceptional circumstances
The two men arranged to meet again at Ben-Gurion’s home. This time, not as adversaries, or as historian and subject, but simply as two men continuing a conversation that never truly ended.
Ben-Gurion died three years later. The Lavon Affair remained part of his story, though it is typically eclipsed by the magnitude of his achievements.
Talmon continued to teach, write, and engage with public debate. He died in 1980 at just the age of sixty-four, shortly after completing the final volume of his trilogy on totalitarian democracy.
Yet his next undertaking was meant to be the most ambitious of his career: a sweeping history of the modern Jewish people, a work that would finally place Jewish history at the center of his scholarly enterprise rather than at its margins. Like the Ben-Gurion biography he never wrote, that project remained unfinished.
