The First Phase—1913-1942

In our first lecture, Professor Gordis discusses Menachem Begin's family life, and his family's devotion to Zionism and the Jewish tradition. He reviews Begin's time in Beitar, the Zionist youth movement that was dedicated to creating a Jewish state, and he explains how Begin thought about the Shoah, the Second World War catastrophe in which much of his family was murdered and the world he'd grown up in destroyed. After being imprisoned in the Soviet gulag and joining the Polish army to fight the Nazis, Begin eventually came to mandatory Palestine in 1942.