Golda Meir

Meron Medzini

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783110489798
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

For five decades Golda Meir was at the center of the political arena in Israel and left her mark on the development of the Yishuv and the state. She was a unique woman, great leader, with a magnetic personality, a highly complex individual. She held some of the most important positions that her party and the State could bestow. She fulfilled most of them with talent and dignity. She failed in the top job – that of Prime Minister. This biography traces her origins, her American roots, her immediate family, her failed marriage, her rise in the party, the trade union movement, her massive and enduring achievements as Secretary of Labor and Housing, her ten year stint as foreign minister and finally the reasons that led to her failure as prime minister. She was a very good tactician, far less a strategist. She was a major builder of modern Israel whose influence on that country, on Israel-American relations and on Jewish history was evident primarily from 1969 to 1974. The author who served as spokesman for Golda Meir in 1973-1974 weaves a gripping story of one of the builders and leaders of the State of Israel.

1Origins (1898–1906)

Golda Meir was a classic product of the Eastern European Jewish ghetto, of the small town known as the shtetl, of debilitating misery and harsh existence, of a shabby life and a daily struggle for survival. Her family originated from White Russia, that marshy area around Pinsk, bordered by two rivers—Pripyat and Pina, where Jews eked a bare livelihood from fishing, portage and trading with the local peasants and middle class, acting as middlemen for both. The dominant personality in the family was her great-grandmother, after whom she was named. Great-grandmother (bobbe) Golda was known to have possessed a “man’s head”. She apparently had good common sense, was very orthodox and sought to meddle in the lives of all who surrounded her, a task in which she succeeded hugely.

For decades, Golda Meir’s mother, Blume, suffered a great deal under the heavy-handed tyranny of great-grandmother Golda. In later years she attempted unsuccessfully to play a similar role. Golda’s maternal grandfather, Menachem Naidich, was a yeshiva student, serious and stern, who barely left an impression on his granddaughter. Her father, Moshe Mabovich, was an orphan when he arrived in Pinsk. His father had served in the Czarist army for thirteen years, but managed to remain a Jew by shunning meat. Mabovich was one of thirteen children, of which only three survived, a common phenomenon in those days. He was sent to study at the well-known and prestigious yeshiva (religious school) in Slonim that produced some of the greatest Jewish minds in the past two centuries. But this was not for him, neither financially nor spiritually. He preferred to learn a trade and became a carpenter’s apprentice.

Seventy years later, when Prime Minister Golda Meir had an audience with Pope Paul VI in the Vatican, one of her aides mentioned to her hosts that she was a carpenter’s daughter. A Vatican official responded solemnly: “Carpenters are highly respected here”. Unfortunately, Mabovich was not respected and he barely made a living. When he courted Blume, he encountered vehement opposition from her mother who ruled that there had never been an artisan in the family and she saw no reason to change this tradition. Grandmother Golda had other ideas. She decreed that he could marry Blume and that it was no disaster that Mabovich was a carpenter as long as he was a mensch (a decent human being). She, of course, prevailed and the marriage was arranged. Blume was the eldest of eight children, six sisters and two brothers. Her own mother, Pessia-Feigel, Golda Meir’s grandmother, was, according to Golda’s older sister Sheina, the chronicler of the family history, an ordinary woman who led a difficult existence and was constantly complaining and bickering, with one exception—no bickering on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays.1

Once married, Blume began to produce children. She bore eight, of which three girls survived. Death was a common occurrence among adults, but most often among babies. One of Sheina’s early memories was the death of great-grandmother Golda, at the ripe old age of 90, after having ruled the family with an iron hand for decades. On a Friday morning, Bobbe Golda asked to be washed and dressed in a clean shift. Before the Sabbath, she sent for the rabbi and spoke briefly with him, then turned her face to the wall and fell silent. On Saturday morning she opened her eyes, summoned the entire family to her bedside and blessed them. She died after sunset.2

Shortly after Blume married Moshe Mabovich, their eldest daughter Sheina was born and survived. Her birth convinced Mabovich that living with his in-laws was too much of a burden. Besides, although he was becoming better at his trade, he failed to find a decent, well-paying job. He decided to leave his wife and child with her parents, and moved to Kiev to seek a change. But that was a mistake. He had no residence permit for Kiev and was briefly arrested once before a permit was arranged. He then sent for his wife and child. Sheina recalls in her memoirs that life in Kiev was miserable. He was barely making a living and the family constantly moved from one house to another, each one worse than its predecessor. Her mother became increasingly impatient with her lot and often quarreled with Mabovich who was mostly at home without work.3

A baby boy was born but survived only a few weeks. He caught a cold and was treated by his mother with folk medicine. She had him swabbed in cloth sprayed with terpentine and hog fat, causing the baby to die of asphyxiation. Once recovered, Blume took a job as a nursemaid while Mabovich established a carpentry shop in their tiny one-room apartment which also contained a miniature kitchen. The shop failed and Blume became despondent. Sheina was not sent to a public school and only briefly attended a Jewish school (cheder). Both parents agreed that girls did not require education, thereby adhering to the accepted Jewish norms.4

It was into these harsh circumstances that Golda Meir was born in Kiev on May 3, 1898 when Sheina was nine. She came to the world after numerous failed attempts by her parents to have children who would survive. Golda was born with the help of a midwife and was named after her great-grandmother. She developed well and as a baby demanded much attention, making Sheina extremely jealous, a situation that would last a lifetime and had far-reaching effects on Golda’s future development. Sheina was now forced to do the chores of looking after Golda and later wrote: “Whatever Golda wanted, she could easily obtain”. She also noted that Golda was a pretty child. Seeking attention would also be a typical Golda trait.5

For a while the family lived in a three-room house, the largest room set aside for the carpentry. There was also a well-lit kitchen and a bedroom. The family, which now consisted of the parents and two daughters, was soon joined by Moshe’s mother, grandmother Tsippy, who came and stayed. Tsippy decided she did not want free meals, so she earned her living by running the household and thus coming almost at once into a conflict with her daughter-in-law Blume. There were constant arguments on how the house should be run, over expenses, food, what went for clothing and how to raise the girls. Golda’s earliest memories were of endless arguments between her mother and grandmother and later, between the mother and Sheina. Tsippy was a restless woman, always busy, forever moving, cleaning, dusting, cooking and sewing. She hated idleness. Golda inherited these traits. In later years she could rarely sit still without doing something.

Tsippy, Blume and Sheina emerge from existing memoirs as very unhappy women, highly restless and discontent, for whom life was a constant ordeal they had to go through without much hope of improvement. From those early days Golda remembered the poverty, the freezing winters, on occasion hunger and fear. As food became scarce, Blume found work peeling potatoes in a nearby restaurant in return for a glass of milk which went to feed Golda. Another baby boy was born and died after a month.

Sheina recalled Golda as a pretty, well developed child, but noted that something was missing: there was a veil of sadness on her face. She had no toys, no dolls to play with. From early on she displayed another well-known trait—stubbornness. Tension between the two sisters started early. Sheina began to educate herself by reading from books she brought to the house. Golda was interested in the pictures and would take the books away from Sheina. One day she tore a page out of a book causing a crisis. Sheina was about to hit her when she was rescued by her mother. From then on, Sheina hid her books away from curious Golda.6

The arrival of a new baby girl, Tsipke (Clara), when Golda was three and Sheina twelve, changed the household routine. All affection was now showered on Tsipke—after all, she survived after so many natal disasters. Sheina now assumed responsibility for Golda while Blume was busy with Tsipke. Golda was no longer the baby—a change in her status. In the process of looking after Golda, Sheina became her surrogate mother. She now guided Golda in her reading and was later responsible for her initiation into Zionist and Socialist ideologies and activities. Years later, when Golda outshone her sister, this was a cause of much bitterness and resentment on the part of Sheina.

Already at this early stage, Golda craved love, affection and approval. Later, she sought admiration and praise. This she never got at home—neither from her parents nor from Sheina. “Sheina remained one of the great influences of my life—perhaps the greatest, apart from the man I married”, Golda wrote years later. “By any standards, she was an unusual person and for me she was a shining example—my dearest friend and my mentor. Even late in life…in fact Sheina was the one person whose praise and approval, when I won them, which was not easy, meant the most to me”.7 Rare were the moments in which Sheina did praise Golda, more frequently she found fault with Golda’s way of life. She criticized her priorities, the way she raised her children, her friends. There was some validity to these feelings. In later years Golda often left her two children under Sheina’s care, especially when she had to travel abroad. On some of these occasions Sheina would act like a martyr causing Golda much pain and sense of guilt. For her part, she lavished love and affection on Sheina’s children as though they were her own and cared for her sister in her declining years.

In Pinsk she experienced the only event in her life that came close to a pogrom. Rumors spread in town of an impending pogrom. Golda and Tsipke were taken upstairs and placed under the care of friendly neighbors. Mabovich boarded the house door with wooden planks. Blume boiled water in preparation for a long siege and Sheina armed herself with a kitchen knife. Golda remembered the feeling of helplessness, the cowering, the fear, the impotence, all because they were Jews, and as such were under the protection of no one. Even then she realized they were different, vulnerable and utterly at the mercy of whoever wanted to harm them. She never saw a real pogrom, Jews being killed and houses burned or looted. But that experience was etched in her mind until her last days. She often claimed that it was a major influence on her decision to bring about a change in Jewish existence. At this early age she already understood the meaning of “us” (Jews) versus “them” (Goyim—Gentiles) and these identities accompanied her all her life.

From her early childhood she retained other bitter memories—of mud, dust and dirt, the swamps and spring floods, the filth and flies, which haunted her for the rest of her life. She became obsessively addicted to cleanliness which she relentlessly pursued and demanded of others. Psychologists claim that this is a clear sign of the absence of love and warmth at home. Even when she was foreign minister and prime minister, she would continue to wash her underwear and the dishes in the kitchen late at night, long after the last guest departed, even though she had staff to do this for her. She claimed that she did her best thinking while washing dishes or her hair, some of the few moments when she was alone and could fully concentrate. She detested untidiness in speech, dress, behavior and action. She also hated inaction and passivity, to her signs of Jews hiding from the roaring Cossaks taunting the frightened Jews.

At home the bickering never stopped. As she watched her grandmother, mother and older sister arguing for hours over trivial matters, she was determined that this would not happen to her. She abhorred discord and preferred conciliation over conflict, resolving problems rather than exacerbating them. I have a rule in my life, she once said, if you can arrange matters without a scandal, arrange them, so that you can restore balance and peace of mind.8

Before she celebrated her fifth birthday, the family moved to Pinsk where Mabovich, for unknown reasons, was under the impression that he was going to improve his lot. Pinsk was then a major center of Jewish learning and political action, a cradle of Zionism. The family now lived with grandparents Naiditch. But as things did not improve, Mabovich slowly mulled over the logical conclusion reached by millions of Jews at the time: he would emigrate to America. He was neither a Zionist, nor a Socialist, and he never had any intention of assimilating into the hostile non-Jewish environment. There remained one avenue of escape, to try his luck across the Atlantic Ocean. As was the custom of the time, he would go first, leaving his family behind, save some money and send ship tickets for them to follow. When he left for America Golda was barely five, Clara one and Sheina—fourteen. Now there began a period known as “life of paper”, waiting for letters from America to arrive. For the next three years the family was without a father. This left an imprint on Golda and made it easier for her to accept the fact that her children could be without their mother for long periods when she traveled abroad, leaving her children in the care of her sister.

It was Sheina who introduced Golda to Zionism. Sheina made her own way to Zionism when she became a member of a small youth group with ten other high school students who met at the home of Chaya Lichtenstein, the sister of the rising Zionist leader and future first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann. In the style of the times, they formed a circle, or study group, discussing and arguing over political and social issues, anti-Semitism, the Jewish Question. They also read forbidden pamphlets dealing with revolutionary ideas. Meetings were held in secret, sometimes in the synagogue after Sabbath services. This may have been the source of Golda’s future insistence on secrecy. Her dictum was: what you don’t have to publicize, don’t. On rare occasions meetings were held at the Naiditch home where Golda, age seven, participated in her first illegal political meeting. Increasingly the group’s discussions focused on the perennial question “What is to be done?”

One answer was Zionism, the response of a tiny minority among Jews. It meant the eventual creation of a Jewish homeland in its ancient patrimony, Palestine. Another road was to pursue the social-revolutionary movement of Russia which called for a revolutionary overthrow of the Czarist regime, its replacement by a Socialist rule and thus, they believed, an end to anti-Semitism. Many young Jews were attracted by a synthesis of both ideologies and became Zionists-Socialists. For them, the establishment of a Jewish State would be incomplete unless it would become Socialist. In July 1904 the founder of modern Zionism, Theodore Herzl, died in Vienna. His death came as a shock to millions of Jews. Golda recalled that an aunt came to their home in tears: Herzl was dead. “I have never forgotten the stunning silence with which we received the news. My sister Sheina wore black clothes from that day until we arrived in America two years later”.9 Sheina’s involvement with Zionism and socialism led to renewed tensions with Blume. Attendance at illegal political meetings could lead to arrest and possible deportation to Siberia. Blume was terrified of the long arm of the Czarist police and its secret agents. By then Sheina was a determined young woman with a mind (and tongue) of her own and resisted her mother. In her memoirs Golda wrote that Sheina preached to her: “There is one way to do anything: the right way”. At fifteen, Sheina was already a perfectionist, a young woman who lived according to her principles, whatever the price, a severe taskmaster, stern and austere. Sheina did her own thing and continued to attend the meetings. Golda learned a simple lesson which would stand her in good stead for the rest of her life—if you persist, you eventually get your way.10

The two sisters were still at loggerheads, usually over trivial matters such as books. Golda became increasingly curious and inquisitive. She managed to obtain a notebook into which she copied the alphabet letters from prayer books she found in her grand-parents home. Her mother was not convinced of the usefulness of Golda learning to read and write. Fortunately for Golda, Sheina once again took over her initial education, teaching her the rudiments of arithmetic, reading and writing.

From America, Mabovich wrote that he had arrived in New York, but not finding work there, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) suggested that he move west to a city called Milwaukee in the state of Wisconsin, which both he and his family had never heard of. The HIAS social worker convinced him that his chances of getting work there were far better than in New York and supplied him with a rail ticket. Once in Milwaukee, he did find work with a railway company and started saving money to bring his family over.

Back in Pinsk, Blume began working as a confectioner in a bakery and once again moved with her daughters to a one-room apartment with a tiny kitchen attached. It was in the poor section of Pinsk, on an unpaved dirty lane. Now they existed under the expectation that soon money would arrive and the entire family would travel to the Goldene Medina (the Golden Country). Letters from Milwaukee were increasingly more cheerful. Mabovich wrote that he found a job, settled down and would soon send for them. Soon he was able to save enough money. Just after Passover 1906, there was a tearful departure scene at the Pinsk railway station as Blume and he...