Midreshet Ben-Gurion

Graves of Paula and David Ben-Gurion, Midreshet Ben Gurion

Midreshet Ben Gurion, photographed from Maale Divshon

Midreshet Ben-Gurion (Hebrew: מידרשת בן-גוריון) is a communal settlement near kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev desert of Israel. David Ben-Gurion and his wife Paula Ben-Gurion are buried side by side on the cliff overlooking a Zin valley.

Both the kibbutz and the midrasha were inspired and guided by David Ben-Gurion's vision of building a thriving Jewish culture in the arid Negev.

Many institutions are consolidated at midrasha under the double sign of the desert and of the cultural heritage of Ben Gurion. The Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research are entrusted with promoting models for the development of the desert. The Ben Gurion Heritage Institute, which is charged with the study and the dissemination of his writings, offers visitors a multi-media program about the man and his work. The Environmental Center includes a college and a high school where the curriculum emphasizes a concern for the environment.

Research centre

The Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, a faculty of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, has a solar energy research programme that has developed some interesting demonstrations of how the extremes of heat and cold experienced in the desert can be mitigated through efficient storage of heat during the day for release at night.

Among these are an inhabited adobe house that has rational fenestration, with small windows in the northern side and heat collecting concrete prisms in the windows of the south facing wall. The prisms are situated in the rooms. They absorb heat during the day and can be rotated to allow the heat to discharge into the rooms at night. The "chimney" is actually part of an evaporative cooling system that maintains the temperature of the house during the day at bearable levels.

There is a double skin greenhouse that uses copper sulfate solution as a heat screen during the day. The liquid is pumped between the two skins, protects the interior from ultraviolet rays and collects heat. At night the liquid is recirculated returning the heat to the greenhouse.