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Ben-Gurion saw himself not only as a statesman but also—maybe primarily—as an original thinker and intellectual mentor. He had taught himself classical Greek so as to read Plato in the original, had dipped into Hegel and Marx, had taken an interest in Buddhism and Far Eastern thought, and had studied Spinoza so thoroughly that he considered himself a Spinozist. (The philosopher Isaiah Berlin, a man with a razor-sharp mind, whom Ben-Gurion used to enlist as his companion whenever he raided the great bookshops of Oxford for philosophy books, when he was already prime minister, once said to me: "Ben-Gurion went out of his way to depict himself as an intellectual. This was based on two mistakes. The first, he believed, wrongly, that Chaim Weizmann was an intellectual. The second, he also believed, wrongly, that Jabotinsky was an intellectual" In this way Isaiah Berlin ruthlessly killed three prominent birds with one clever stone.)

Every now and again Prime Minister Ben-Gurion filled the weekend supplement of Davar with lengthy theoretical reflections on philosophical questions. Once, in January 1961, he published an essay in which he claimed that equality between human beings was impossible, although they could achieve a measure of fraternity.

Considering myself a defender of kibbutz values, I penned a short response in which I asserted, with due humility and respect, that Comrade Ben-Gurion was mistaken.* When my article appeared, it provoked a great deal of anger in Kibbutz Hulda. The members were furious at my impertinence: "How dare you disagree with Ben-Gurion?"

Only four days later, however, the gates of Heaven opened for me: the Father of the Nation descended from his great heights and deigned to publish a long, courteous reply to my piece; extending over several prominent columns, it defended the views of the "great man of his day" against the criticisms of the lowest of the low.**

The same members of the kibbutz who only a couple of days earlier had wanted to send me away to some reeducation institution because of my impertinence now beamed delightedly and hurried over to shake my hand or pat me on the back: Vell, you've made it! You're immortal! Your name will be in the index of Ben-Gurion's collected writings someday! And the name of Kibbutz Hulda will be there too, thanks to you!"

But the Age of Miracles had only just begun.

A couple of days later came the phone call.

It didn't come to me—we didn't have telephones in our little rooms yet—it came to the kibbutz office. Bella P., a veteran member who happened to be in the office at the time, ran to find me, pale and trembling like a sheet of paper, as shaken as though she had just seen the chariots of the gods wreathed in flames of fire, and told me as though they were her dying words that the Prime-Minister-and-Minister-of-Defense's secretary had summoned me to appear early the next morning, at six-thirty precisely, at the minister of defense's office in Tel Aviv, for a personal meeting with the Prime-Minister-and-Minister-of-Defense, at David Ben-Gurion's personal invitation. She pronounced the words "Prime-Minister-and-Minister-of-Defense" as though she had said "The Holy One Blessed Be He."

Now it was my turn to go pale. Firstly, I was still in uniform, I was a regular soldier, a staff sergeant in the army, and I was half afraid that I had broken some rule or regulation in embarking on an ideological dispute in the columns of the newspaper with my commander-in-chief. Secondly, I didn't possess a single pair of shoes apart from my heavy, studded army boots. How could I appear before the Prime-Minister-and-Minister-of-Defense? In sandals? Thirdly, there was no way in the world I could get to Tel Aviv by half past six in the morning: the first bus from Kibbutz Hulda didn't leave till seven and it didn't get to the Central Bus Station till half past eight, with luck.

*David Ben-Gurion, "Reflections," Davar, 27 Jan. 1961; Amos Oz, "Fraternity Is No Substitute