The Correspondence Of Menachem Begin

Photo Credit: Saul Jay Singer

Indisputably one of Israel’s greatest leaders and one of the greatest Jews of all time, Menachem Begin (1913-1992) was a participant in many of the major events in modern Jewish history: the evolution of Zionism, the resistance to the Nazi genocide, the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe, the struggle against British rule in Eretz Yisrael, the founding of the state of Israel, and the peace treaty with Egypt. Leader of the Irgun, fervent conservative idealist and philosopher, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and the first Likud prime minister, he played a prominent role in the history of the Jewish state.

As the leader of the Irgun, he played a central role in Jewish military resistance to the British Palestine Mandate, but he was strongly deplored by mainstream Zionist leadership. Suffering eight consecutive defeats in the years preceding his premiership, Begin came to embody the opposition to the Ashkenazi Mapai-led establishment, and his electoral victory in 1977 not only ended three decades of Labor Party political hegemony, but it also symbolized a new social realignment in which previously marginalized communities in Israel gained public recognition.

Begin’s first significant achievement as Prime Minister was to negotiate the Camp David Accords with President Sadat of Egypt, agreeing on the full withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from the Sinai Peninsula and its return to Egypt in 1978. Yet, in the years to follow, especially during his second term in office from 1981, Begin’s government reclaimed a nationalist agenda, promoted the expansion of Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories, and launched a limited invasion into southern Lebanon in 1982, which quickly escalated into full-fledged war. As Israeli military involvement in Lebanon deepened, Begin grew increasingly depressed and reticent and, facing mounting public pressure after the death of his wife Aliza, he resigned as prime minister in September 1983 and withdrew from public life.

While it is virtually impossible to capture the essence and greatness of the man in a single article, or even in a full-fledged tome, I think that a good glimpse of who he was and what he represented may be gleaned through his correspondence. As such, I present here some of my favorite Begin letters from my collection, along with some related materials.

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In this July 27, 1972 correspondence, Begin, then a Chaver Knesset, writes to Joseph Olitzky, a former Haganah member, Israeli journalist with Davar, and the author of Tzibur Ha-Ovdim B’milchemet Sheshet Hayamim (“The Workers in the Six-Day War”):

I hereby thank you for your letter dated July 18, 1972 and for agreeing to place within my possession the newspaper edition of “Korot” from July 6^th. I read with particularly great interest the list from June 1941, in the newspaper “HaYarden” [the Jordan], with respect to my separation on the road to the northern wilderness of Russia. I thank you for writing these things down, I made them known [literally: “placed them in the ears of”] Paula Deichs, a young girl from Poland, who at great risk to her freedom came to me, in place of my wife, and also brought to me “a correspondence of soap” – secret greetings from my friend, Yosef Glazman. The two of them, Yosef and dear little Paula, fell to the German Army in the forests of Lithuania; both were courageous heroes and holy ones.

I guess that Yosef received these things from Paula Dix and passed them to Eretz Yisrael. Recollections of these days touches me deep in my heart.

When the Nazis invaded Warsaw in 1939, Begin, then head of Betar in Poland, escaped to Vilna, where the Soviets caught him and deported him. While waiting in prison to be taken to a Siberian labor camp – hence, Begin’s reference to “the northern wilderness of Russia” in our letter – he was granted the right to have a visitor, and he requested his wife, Aliza. However, in her place came Paula, a similar-looking Betar girl who posed as Aliza to give him a message: that Aliza had arrived safely in Eretz Yisrael. Paula also gave Begin a bar of soap, which the prison guards cut to inspect for messages, but they found nothing. Begin, however, proved more thorough, and he found a note from a friend, Natan Yellin Mor, advising him that U.S. officials and the Jewish community in Eretz Yisrael were working to secure his release. Paula Dix later died fighting the Nazis in Vilna.

Begin’s friend and fellow Betar leader, Yosef Glazman (1913-1943), joined Betar in his early teens and served as the central organizer of the movement in Lithuania (1937-1940). He was arrested when Germany invaded the Soviet Union and took over Soviet-occupied territories, including Lithuania. Returning in November 1941 to Vilna, he organized an underground Betar group and served as deputy chief of the Jewish ghetto police to promote his underground activities. In January 1942, he helped found an underground militia, the United Partisan Organization (FPO), which he served as deputy commander and chief of intelligence while also working in the ghetto’s educational and cultural programs.

After Jacob Gens, head of the Judenrat, ordered Glazman’s arrest, Glazman left the ghetto with a group of FPO members to join the partisans and he formed the Jewish partisan unit Nekama (“Revenge”) in the Narocz Forest. He fell in combat against a large German force on October 7, 1943, and The Song Of The Partisans, an anthem traditionally sung by Holocaust survivors on Yom HaShoah, was written in memory of, and dedication to, him.

In this August 2, 1988 correspondence, Begin, then retired, writes from Jerusalem:

I extend my heartfelt thanks to you for sending me the Memorial Book containing the history of all our nation’s suffering and its annihilation in Europe during the Holocaust.

It is difficult to behold these photographs, but there can be no choice, because it is important to always remember that which was done to the six million Jews.

I remember you, dear Kuba, your dedication to our ideas and your personal friendship.

Begin, who lost both his parents and his older brother, Herzl, in the Holocaust, was shaped by the tragedy of the Shoah, and his policies, politics, and philosophy were centered on taking every reasonable step to protect Jews and to ensure that no Holocaust would ever happen again. He was adamant in refusing to ever forgive the Nazis and, in the 1950s, he led the movement against accepting German reparations for the Holocaust. While he mourned the murder of every Jew in Eretz Yisrael by what he called “the so-called Palestinians,” which he characterized as “a neo-Nazi organization,” he was particularly distraught by the slaughter of Holocaust survivors who had made their way to Eretz Yisrael, only to be murdered by the PLO.

In this July 25, 1975 correspondence on his Member of Knesset letterhead, Begin cites the importance of maintaining Israel’s national defense in the face of Sadat’s express policy of continuing Egypt’s war against Israel:

I thank you for your July 16, 1975 correspondence.

It is already difficult for me in a certain way to read in the language that was, decades ago, the language of my studies [i.e., Polish], but I read all your words with great attention. Your national analysis is correct in principle. We try to explain to the nation the danger of giving in to preconditions and abandoning vital defensive posts while the enemy continues to maintain war status against us and reveals in his speeches, as Sadat did, that his strategy is to continue the war.

And I hereby thank you again for your letter.

Ironically, it was Begin who, as Prime Minister, welcomed Anwar Sadat on November 19, 1997 – only two years later – upon his landing at Ben-Gurion airport, becoming the first Arab leader ever to visit the Jewish state. Sadat was driven to Jerusalem for an hour-long meeting with Begin and, in a historic speech broadcast live to hundreds of millions of people all over the world, he became the first Arab leader to address the Knesset.

In this September 1, 1977 correspondence on his Prime Minister letterhead to Mr. Zvi Levin, Begin expresses his concern regarding the expansion of Arab propaganda throughout the world, and in the United States in particular. [It is not difficult to imagine Begin’s horror at the increasingly effective Hamas propaganda machine in the United States today.] He writes of his hopes that the appointment of Mr. Shmuel Katz as the Prime Minister’s Advisor on Foreign Affairs will help to develop appropriate counter-activity.

Shmuel (“Mooki”) Katz (1914-2008) was an Israeli writer, historian, and journalist who, prior to the formation of the State of Israel, was a Zionist activist and a member of the Irgun High Command and its spokesman. As Begin wrote in The Revolt (see next exhibit) – which Katz later translated into English – Katz was “the officer responsible for Jerusalem until the dissolution of the military regiments of the Irgun.” A member of the first Knesset and one of Begin’s leading advisors, he is also known for Lone Wolf, his comprehensive biography of Jabotinsky.

Levin was an activist revisionist, member of Beitar, cantor, and honorary citizen of Tel Aviv.

Exhibited here is the title page of Begin’s seminal The Revolt, which he dedicates in friendship to John L. Loeb and dates Jerusalem, “February 1980.”

The Revolt: Inside Story of the Irgun and The Revolt: the Dramatic Inside Story of the Irgun (1951), traces the development of the Irgun from its early days in the 1930s, through its years of violent struggle under the British Mandate and Arab opposition until Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. Partly autobiographical, the book also traces Begin’s own political development; run out of Poland by the Nazis, imprisoned by the Soviets, hunted by the British, and nearly murdered by the Jews, the story is an incredible tale of survival and persistence.

John Langeloth Loeb Jr. (b. 1930) is an American businessman, former United States Ambassador to Denmark under President Reagan, and former Delegate to the United Nations. He is an advocate for religious freedom and separation of church and state, having founded the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom (2009), whose mission is to raise awareness about the roots of religious freedom and the separation of church and state in the United States.

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In this September 13, 1991 correspondence, Begin writes optimistically:

I hope that the example of President Sadat will be contagious and we shall live to see in our time peace reigning between us and all our neighbors.

Exhibited here is a handwritten note by Begin in which he discusses America’s role in Israel’s Taba dispute with Egypt. On the margin of the note, a different handwriting adds: “A proposal to solve the Taba crisis approved by the government, April 4, 1982.”

Taba, a small Egyptian town near the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba, is now Egypt’s busiest border crossing with neighboring Israel. It was located on the Egyptian side of the 1949 armistice line; it was briefly occupied by Israel during the Suez Crisis (1956); and Israel built a 400-room luxury hotel there when it reoccupied the Sinai Peninsula after the Six-Day War (1967). After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel and Egypt commenced peace and border negotiations, which led to the Camp David Accords signed by the parties on the White House lawn with President Carter (1978). Pursuant to the 1979 peace treaty following Camp David, Israel was to withdraw piecemeal from the Sinai and, by 1982 (the year of Begin’s note), most of Sinai had been returned to Egypt.

Taba was ultimately returned to Egypt, the last portion of the Sinai ceded by Israel. After a long dispute, intensive U.S.-mediated talks (which Begin alludes to in our exhibit here), and heavy American pressure, the parties agreed to submit the question to an international commission composed of one Israeli, one Egyptian, and three outsiders. Then foreign minister Yitzchak Shamir and others argued that going to arbitration meant the automatic return of Taba to Egypt, and they were proven correct when the commission ruled in Egypt’s favor (1989). On March 15, 1989, Israelis, crying and singing Am Yisrael Chai (“the nation of Israel lives”), marched out of Taba only seconds before Egyptians raised their flag over the tiny strip of beach, chanting “Today Taba, tomorrow all of Palestine.”

In this October 28, 1974 correspondence on his Member of Knesset letterhead, Begin writes to Rav Menachem Porush:

I hereby thank you for your additional letter of 30 Tishrei (October 16) 1974.

I also read with great interest the response of the Center for Jewish Communities in South Africa. I paid attention to their prose to continue to use effort to nullify the order that damages your education of Jewish children. For my part, as I advised you, I will strive to influence my colleagues to work to their best ability together with other responsible Jewish authorities.

Rav Menachem Porush (1916-2010) served as a member of the Knesset for Agudat Yisrael and its alliances from 1959-75 and 1977-1994. He also served as chairman of the Agudat Yisroel Center (1955); as deputy head of the Jerusalem city council (1969-74); and for a time as Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Welfare. Apparently, Rav Porush became concerned about the education of South African Jewish children, and Begin promised to intercede with the appropriate authorities to remedy the situation.

Prior to Begin’s rise to power, every Labor government since Israel’s founding had subjected Sephardim and other minorities to de facto segregation and employed religious-ethnonationalism to create an apartheid-like reality in Israel. Begin, a champion of the Sephardim and the lower classes (who adored him and thrust him into office), placed particular emphasis on providing a quality Jewish education to all Israeli children.

Today, the Jewish day school system in South Africa is comprehensive, educating some 85% of Jewish children, and the South African Board of Jewish Education represents the Jewish community in educational matters and acts as the controlling body of the King David Schools – a network of Jewish day schools in Johannesburg. There are a number of smaller, more religiously focused schools, ranging in orientation from Mizrachi to charedi, in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. The Yeshivah Gedolah of Johannesburg, the traditional Orthodox community’s rabbinical studies center, and Lubavitch Yeshiva Gedolah, the Chabad center, both constitute the options available to South African Jews interested in advanced Jewish religious education.

In Begin’s time, Israel and South Africa had historically maintained full diplomatic ties, but relations were always delicate. In the United Nations and other fora, Israel was often signaled out for special condemnation on account of Jerusalem’s commercial and military ties with Pretoria during the apartheid regime, despite the fact that compared to the level of trade with other states, the scale of Israel’s ties was negligible. More recently, the relationship has become tenuous, at best, in the wake of the January 2024 decision by the South African government to maintain only limited political and diplomatic interaction with Israel due to the ongoing Palestinian conflict.

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Shortly before Passover on 11 Nisan 1981, Rav Porush wrote to Begin complaining about Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek’s plan to construct an illegal amphitheater next to the Kotel in violation of a court order. Given the outrage of charedi Orthodox Jews and hoping to avoid a great public demonstration and negative worldwide media attention, the Rav seeks Begin’s intervention.

In his April 6, 1982 response on his Prime Minister’s letterhead, Begin writes:

Thank you for your letter dated 11 Nisan.

It is well understood that I will write immediately to the Mayor but, as you know, my influence on him and his decisions is not great.

I will do the best that I can.

With wishes of a joyous holiday season to you and all the members of your household.

Very much a man of his word, Begin sent the following correspondence to Mayor Kollek later that very day:

I received a letter from Knesset Member Rav Menachem Porush, who bitterly complains that the Jerusalem municipality is erecting an amphitheater near the shelter next to the Wailing Wall.

It is understood that I have no official authority to be involved with the decisions of the municipality, but I will ask you to reconsider the matter and to attempt to reach agreement with the critics of this plan. Inasmuch as the subject being discussed is Jerusalem between the walls [i.e., in the Old City]; if we say this – we have said it all.

With wishes of a joyous holiday season to you and all the members of your household.

Although he wasn’t fully observant, Begin had an unparalleled Jewish soul and he always cared deeply about Jewish practice and tradition. Many of his most fiery speeches were about preserving Jewish practice; see also Begin’s correspondence regarding El Al flights on Shabbat, discussed below.

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In this August 19, 1964 letter on his Member of Knesset letterhead, Begin writes:

Thank you for your letter concerning the issue of a postal stamp in honour of Rosh Betar Zeev Jabotinsky. Indeed we made efforts to have such a stamp issued before the repatriation of Rosh Betar’s remains, however we were only partly successful, as the Ministry of Posts agreed to have an imprint (seal) on env elopes with the words “Zeev Jabotinsky returns to the Homeland.”

We shall continue our efforts about the stamp for the next year, namely on the 25^th anniversary of Rosh Betar’s passing away.

In this October 9, 1980 letter written on his Prime Minister’s letterhead to Dahlia Gottan, Begin writes:

Thank you for your booklet, Menorah, that you asked to be dedicated on the occasion of 100 years since the birth of Zev Jabotinsky. You have done a great thing, both nationally and educationally. May blessings come to you.

Gottan, head of the Diaspora Education Department of WIZO (the Women’s International Zionist Organization), edited many WIZO publications, including The Festivals: A Renewed Encounter (1986) and Portraits of Jewish Renaissance Women (1991).

A towering figure who broke with mainstream Zionism in the 1920s, Jabotinsky founded Revisionist Zionism and never veered from his insistence on total, unquestioning devotion to “the only and single idea of establishing a Jewish state” with “a Jewish majority on both sides of the Jordan.” He was Begin’s mentor to whom Begin unabashedly attributed his own philosophy and Revisionist politics. The respect that Begin had for him is reflected in our letter, where he repeatedly refers to Jabotinsky as “Rosh Betar” (the head of Betar).

In this May 5, 1982 correspondence on his Prime Minister letterhead, Begin writes to Rav Porush:

The government, in its Sunday, 9 Iyar 1982 session, adopted the following resolution:

1. It is in accordance with the essence and foundation of government policy to state:

From clause 27 of the fundamental law: “education is based upon the eternal principles of the Torah of Israel.” From clause 34, to wit: “the government cultivates an attitude of respect for the Heritage of Israel, and bequeaths its principles.” And with faithfulness to the agreements of the political coalition [which specifically includes Agudat Israel] to uphold the rule that agreements must be kept, the decision of the government is that the airplanes of the national aviation company [i.e., El-Al] will not take off, will not fly, and will not land on Shabbat and Jewish holidays…

With my notice to the Knesset on 10 Iyar (May 3) 1982, I voiced, among other things, the following:

“… yesterday the government also resolved that, after the setting of a flight schedule by a special committee of ministers, and additional arrangements, after the date of the resolution [the emphasis in this letter is mine; the interpretation of the word is conclusive, and the date is final] of three months, there will be no more flights on Shabbat and Jewish holidays of the airplanes of the national aviation company “El-Al.”

As you know, the Knesset confirmed my notice and also issued parliamentary conformation regarding the halting of “El-Al” flights on Shabbat and Jewish holidays.

This is the only interpretation of the government resolution of 9 Iyar 1982.

From the earliest days of Israel, the operation of El-Al in keeping with Jewish tradition has been a source of friction; when Ben-Gurion formed his first coalition, the religious parties refused to join unless Ben-Gurion promised that El-Al would serve only kosher food on its flights and would not fly on Shabbat. In the mid-1970s, the airline began to schedule flights from airports outside of Israel that departed on Shabbat and landed in Israel after Shabbat, but the religious parties argued that this was a violation of Jewish law and contrary to the agreement signed in the early days of the state.

In 1982, shortly after his reelection, Begin – who had been itching to take on the El-Al workforce, one of the most powerful labor unions in the country, and put a stop to the operations of Israel’s national airline on Shabbat and Jewish festivals – introduced a law to ban such flights, which passed 58-54. An outraged secular community threatened to boycott the airline and, in August 1982, El-Al workers blocked Orthodox and chassidic Jews from entering the airport, but the “no-Shabbat flight” policy held, with few exceptions.

When a colleague once asked him what had been the greatest achievement of the Jewish people during their long history, Begin responded, “Shabbat, the day of rest.”