Ben-Gurion House
Ben-Gurion House
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Ben-Gurion House

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Ben-Gurion House

The Ben-Gurion House is a historic house museum in Tel Aviv, which served as the family home of pre-State Zionist leader and then first Defense and Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, between 1931 and 1953. Until his death in 1973, it continued serving as an additional residence, along with two others, one private – "Ben-Gurion's hut" at Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev (known as his desert home), and the official residence as Prime Minister of Israel during his multiple terms as head of government. The latter, known as Julius Jacobs House, is located in Rehavia, Jerusalem.

Ben-Gurion House is located at 17, Ben-Gurion Boulevard [he] in northern Tel Aviv.

The house was built in 1930–1931, and David Ben-Gurion and his family lived there from June 1931 until 1953, when they moved to a small wooden house in Kibbutz Sde-Boker in the Negev desert, after which they returned to the Tel Aviv house only part of each year.

The house was built on Jewish National Fund (JNF) land, when the first shechunat ha-po'alim (lit. workers neighborhood, i.e. a workers housing project) was established there in 1930–31, as Shechunat HaPo'alim Aleph, at the junction of Jewish National Fund Boulevard and Lassalle Street. The Jewish National Fund (Hebrew: Keren Kayemet Le'Israel) Boulevard was renamed to Ben-Gurion Boulevard after the politician's death in 1973.

The house was designed by engineer David Tuvia, and as customary in "workers neighborhoods" in Israel at the time, the house included only one room[dubiousdiscuss] and was worth 350 British Mandate pounds. The Ben-Gurion family asked for permission to build a second floor, which was granted. The house was expanded in 1946, and renovated in 1960.

The first floor included the room of Ben-Gurion's second daughter, Renana. It also served Ben-Gurion during the Suez Crisis (Mivtza' Kadesh, "Operation Kadesh") as a shelter and a bedroom. From this room Ben-Gurion conducted his communication with Moshe Dayan, then his Chief of Staff, and from there he received front line updates on the progress of the operation.

The second floor houses a four-room library, a toilet and a bedroom, and served only Ben-Gurion himself at the time.

The library holds his personal collection of periodicals and 20,000 books, in ancient Greek, Latin, English, Hebrew, French, Turkish, German, Russian and other languages. The library, known for its unusual size, may give an idea as to Ben-Gurion's fields of interest. The books deal mainly with the subjects of Zionism, history, various cultures and religions, a collections of Hebrew Bible books[dubiousdiscuss] and more. The many books on IDF's fallen soldiers show the importance given to this subject by Ben-Gurion.

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