>I went to the Mitre and found him in an upstairs parlour, surrounded by noisy beer-drinkers, warming his feet in front of a coal fire, absorbed in a translation of Indian classical poetry. He tore himself from the page and greeted me with the words “Socrates, gurus, rebbes—same thing, no difference, deep wisdom”.

>Our conversations during our walks over the next few days were interspersed with quotations from the Platonic Dialogues—BG always began “Do you know what Socrates said?”, and then tried to apply one of his sayings to some contemporary problem. He did, indeed, speak of Socrates exactly as Chassidim speak of their rebbe.

>I also remember being invited to his house (he was Prime Minister once again) in Jerusalem sometime in the late 1950s, on a sabbath afternoon, to a kind of Bible class which he evidently held regularly. On that day, I found, gathered there, six or seven eminent scholars, both professional and amateur: I remember Zalman Shazar (later President of Israel), Professor Yehezkel Kaufmann, Professor Dinaburg, one of the Justices of the Supreme Court whose name I cannot recollect and three or four others.

>...in connection with the Prophet Nathan, the story of David and Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite naturally came up, and in particular Nathan’s famous fiery words to David “Thou art the man”. Someone then remarked that, as was known, David was not allowed to build the Temple because he was a man of blood; only Solomon could be permitted to do this. At this point BG sprang to the defence of David with mounting passion—declared that he was by far the greatest of the Jews since Moses, that the blood he had spilt was in a holy cause, that he was the creator of a nation, and that Nathan had gone far beyond what was proper in making so fierce an attack on this great and good King.

Israel is lucky to have had such visionaries that put in the hard yards for her creation. Australia meanwhile seems like a nation born out of circumstance, sometimes.