In 1949 prime minister David Ben-Gurion sent a letter to England to offer Tabor a job on the 'physics and engineering desk' of the Research Council of Israel, which he accepted. His first task was to create the National Physical Laboratory of Israel, which had been Tabor's idea as he felt it was essential the new country have the equivalent of the National Physical Laboratory in Britain to create standards amongst the different measurements in use in the country, primarily British, Ottoman and metric. Once the laboratory was established, he focused on solar energy for research and development.