The Torah doesn’t refrain from honoring, celebrating and granting women authority. Sarah, concerned about Ishmael’s threats to Isaac’s spiritual and physical well-being, tells Abraham to send Ishmael and his haughty mother away. Abraham demurs but God intervenes. Recognizing her wisdom, God commands Abraham to do as Sarah says. In fact, the Hebrew Bible depicts women who show enormous precognition, courage and strength. Written in a world that worshiped goddesses and saw women as little more than breeders, nurses and prostitutes, it was unique in presenting women as warriors and judges, including Miriam, Yael, Deborah and Esther, to name a few. Little wonder that Jewish women such as Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug were at the helm of the 1960s women’s movement.
This year, March straddles the celebration of Esther and prepares us to recall the determined Jewish women of Egypt, the two midwives who defended them against the genocidal Pharaoh’s decree, and Miriam who was so instrumental in saving Moses’ life. March is also Women’s History Month. so let us recall and celebrate Golda Meir.
Long before Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir was known as the Iron Lady of Israel.
David Ben-Gurion is said to have called her “the only man in her cabinet.” Eleanor Roosevelt described Meir as “a woman one cannot help but deeply respect and deeply love.”
Meir was fated to be a woman of valor. In May 1898, she he was born in Kiev to an observant Jewish couple, Blume and Moshe Mabowich, and named for her feisty grandmother, Golde, who added salt to her tea instead of sugar. It was a daily reminder of how difficult life in the Diaspora was for Jews. Golda’s elder sister Sheyna became a Labor Zionist and was nearly arrested by the Russians. Zionism coursed through the sisters’ veins.
Their father, Moshe, a carpenter, came to America to earn money in order to bring his family out of the abject poverty and the terrifying pogroms Jews suffered under the Russian Empire. As a 5-year-old, Golda, living in Pinsk with her mother and sister, insisted on joining a protest against pogroms. Three years later, Moshe sent for them and they settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Golda, an excellent student, attended public school, helped out in her mother’s grocery store and organized a fundraiser with a schoolmate. Their objective was to collect money to buy school books for their fellow students who couldn’t afford them.
Sheyna Mabovich Korngold greatly influenced her life. By age 14, Golda was living with her married sister in Denver, where she attended high school. The Korngolds were activists and held meetings in their home, where Golda became a Labor Zionist.
She fell in love with Meyer Myerson, a sign painter who loved art and music. When he proposed marriage, she agreed on the condition that they would make aliyah. Reluctant but besotted and compliant, he promised he would, and kept his word. The couple settled on a kibbutz in Palestine. Golda, who had attended a teachers’ college in Milwaukee, taught in Jewish school and practiced public speaking as a street corner lecturer. She was now a pioneer, working to turn swampland into productive fields. She toiled the soil, planting almond trees and other saplings. The couple had two children, Menashe (who became a professional cellist) and Sarah.
Golda remained politically active and helped found Mapei, the Labor Party. She loved and cared for her family, cooked and baked, but was never totally domesticated. Aside from her loved ones, her passion, concerns and activism extended to the Jewish people and their homeland as well as to those who were marginalized and disempowered.
Golda didn’t possess the beauty of Queen Esther, nor the wealth and power of Dona Gracia, yet the plain-spoken but eloquent woman was wise and a phenomenally successful fundraiser at a time when the Promised Land desperately needed funds, people and arms to realize its promise. In January 1948, Golda, then acting head of the Jewish Agency, was sent to the United States with the goal of raising $25 million to equip the Jewish armed forces..She took the children along.
Her family was facing a crisis. Her daughter, Sarah, had kidney disease that required expert doctors, as yet unavailable in Mandatory Palestine. Because of Golda’s perfect command of English and Yiddish and her powers of persuasion she raised twice that amount. It helped insure Israel’s security against attacks by its Arab neighbors and saved her daughter’s life. Unfortunately, it did not benefit her marriage. The Myersons gradually drifted apart, but never divorced.
Golda Myerson became Golda Meir in 1956, at Ben-Gurion’s behest when she became Israel’s foreign minister. He had changed his name (from David Grün) and thought she, too, as a representative of a Hebrew-speaking nation, should leave behind her Diaspora name. Although she didn’t keep her husband’s name, Golda kept a photograph of him on her nightstand for the rest of her life. She expressed feelings of regret at not having been the ideal daughter, wife and mother while mothering the new nation. (Has any male politician, president or prime minister ever expressed regret for his failures or shortcomings as a son, husband or father?)
Beginning as secretary of Mo’etzet ha-Po’alot (Council of Women Workers) in 1928,, she rose up the ranks and in 1969, Golda was elected Israel’s first (and only) prime minister. Despite a cancer diagnosis and the nearly disastrous 1973 Yom Kippur War, for which she blamed herself, having followed the advice of her military generals rather than her own instincts, she served until 1974.
Golda passed away in 1978. But literary, plastic and theatrical arts insure her legacy. In February 2023 a biographical drama focusing on her years as prime minister premiered at Berlin’s International Film Festival. Shouldn’t we, especially those blessed with daughters and granddaughters, celebrate Women’s History Month with almonds or honey—almond cakes in honor of Golda, and of all the women whose shoulders she stood on. So many Jewish women with Jewish values who are propelled by “justice, justice shall you pursue” have inspired us. May we be privileged to inspire the coming generations to observe God’s first command to “multiply and subdue the earth.”
By Barbara Wind
