Ezra Taft Benson and the State of Israel - Brandeis Institutional ...

when they discard the eternal truths of the gospel.” 110Benson, having been raised andremained an active member of a faith that had long supported Jews as the chosen people,felt deep sorrow for his Israelite family, but takes no blame upon himself for their terriblesuffering.In examining Ezra Taft Benson's views on Israel through a religious lens, we mustconclude that those views are clearly affected by the Christian beliefs of hiscontemporaries, but are essentially the result of the traditional teachings of his Mormonfaith. His professed and unequivocal kinship with the Jews, along with a confidence thattheir “old-new” 111 homeland was the fulfillment of both ancient and modern prophecy,make him both comparable to and yet distinctive among Christian leaders of the day.However, although Mormon, and specifically Benson's, perspectives may have echoedChristian sentiments, Latter-day Saints generally remained outside of the Protestant-Catholic-Jew ecumenism that prevailed in the 1950s. It is also interesting to note thatBenson's professed kinship with the Jewish people, while certainly appreciated (as will bedemonstrated in the subsequent chapter), was somewhat one-sided. But it never wavered.Benson's doggedly religious approach to Israel accompanied him into his politicalwork as well. As Secretary of Agriculture, his religious sense of purpose revealed itselfin his combating what he saw as socialist government policies in farming. In Israel it wasreflected in his comments and descriptions of his visits, and the unique delight he took in110111Dew, Biography, 212.Term borrowed from Theodore Herzl, in the title of his book, Altneuland, 1902, which means “old-newland.”39