Golda Meir: A Light Amidst the Hours of Dark

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Golda Meir: A Light Amidst the Hours of Dark

Chapter One: Introduction

   Childhood and Familial Experiences:

        

        When Golda Meir, whom was born Golda Mabovitch, came into the world on May 3rd, 1898 in Kiev, Ukraine, hostilities against the Jewish civilization gained greater intensity and manifested into a series of hate crimes in the form of pogroms across Russian borders. Since she was a young girl, Meir was always attuned to the overwhelming burdens of her family’s financial constraints and the effect that anti-Semitism maintained over their standard of living. Her father, Moshe Mabovitch, was a carpenter whose work was consistently underappreciated and thus led to his growing incapability of sufficiently providing for his family.

When Golda was five years old, she, her mother and her two sisters, Shaina and Tzipka, moved in with her grandfather in Pinsk in order to give her father time to get back on his feet. Once this move occurred, Moshe began to formulate his plans of emigration to the United States so that he can raise the necessary funds to support his family. Moshe remained in the United States for three years before the rest of the family relocated. During this time, Meir didn’t attend school but received private lessons in the academic fields of arithmetic, reading, and writing.

While the family initially planned on reuniting when Moshe returned to Pinsk, it was due to the revolutionary political activities of Golda’s eldest sister, Shaina, that the family decided to emigrate to the United States as well. Golda’s sister was an active member of the Zionist-Socialist Party which placed her in a position of susceptibility to threat. Partaking in the events of the political party was both illegal and incredibly dangerous. Golda recounts her terrifying memories of all the nights her sister had disappeared from the house and returned home very late. She and her mother “would hear the dreadful cries of young men and women arrested for illegal activity who were being brutally beaten”.1 Despite the fears and worries that were ignited by Shaina’s political stances and activities, Golda admired her objectives and was greatly influenced by the meetings she witnessed in her home when her sister would organize clandestine sessions to discuss various concepts that were forbidden at the time such as overthrowing the czar and creating a Jewish socialist state in Palestine.  

1 Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Golda Meir Speaks Out (London 1973) pp. 20

  “Jewish Problem” and Zionist Parties in Russia

        

The vicious cycle of anti-Semitism brought forth the notion of the “Jewish Problem” which in itself created an additional societal crisis that gave way to a clearer gap between the Jewish and Non-Jewish populations of the time. From a young age, Golda was aware of the fact that the hunger she had experienced both physically for food and emotionally for the presence of her father and a unity amongst her family had been a result of anti-Semitism. In addition to the pogroms that took place in Russia at the time, Jewish businesses were going bankrupt and were subsequently abandoned. Despite the attempts made to regroup and stabilize their financial circumstances and states of security, Jewish families were left with nothing more than a lingering hunger and fear within them. An example of such atrocities took place in the neighboring city of Kishinev in which it was rumored that a female Christian servant was murdered by her Jewish boss. Despite the true event that had caused the girl’s death, in which she had chosen to take poison to end her life, handbills were disbursed throughout the streets encouraging civilians to inflict punishment on the Jewish population of the town. Golda recounts the story that Shamai (Shaina’s friend and future husband) had told her:

“It started at noontime, when the Easter church bells began to ring…a large crowd of townspeople broke into Jewish homes and shops, stealing or destroying everything in sight…the police did nothing, they stood by watching so by nightfall the looters turned into murderers, fell upon Jews with knives and clubs, torturing them, killing them…only once did the police step interfere when a group of Jews were trying to defend themselves with sticks, so the police stepped in to disarm the Jews.”2

This state of havoc and destituteness led to what is formally known as the “Jewish Problem” which was considered the result of “Jewish homelessness that could not, and would not, be solved unless and until the Jews had a land of their own again”.3 It was the desire for a Jewish state that fueled the creation and maintenance of numerous Zionist parties which originated in Russia. Similar to the Socialist-Zionist organization which Shaina was a member of, other Zionist parties such as Hovevei Zion and Poalei Zion thrived in their aspirations to create a Jewish state devoid of persecution.

2Peggy Mann, Golda: The Life of Israel’s Prime Minister (New York 1973) pp.7

3Golda Meir, My Life (New York 1975) pp. 23

  Poalei Zion and Participation in Politics

        It was in the year of 1906 that Golda, her mother and her siblings reunited with her father in Milwaukee where he had become a trade union member who worked in the railroad workshops. After completing her elementary school studies, Golda wanted to advance onto high school so that she could one day become a teacher. Her desire to continue studying was met with great adversity by her parents due to the contemporary law in the state of Wisconsin which prohibited married women from teaching. In order to free herself from her parents’ control, Golda ran away to her older sister’s home in Denver and stayed there until she received a letter from her father asking her to come back home. Due to her knowledge of his stubborn nature, she knew that his letter signified tremendous progression and thus returned home with a newfound freedom to continue with her education without any hindrances from her family. She graduated from high school and continued to study at the Teachers’ Training College in Madison.

        Shaina’s apartment had become a renowned meeting place for Jewish immigrants from Russia who had moved west seeking treatment at Denver’s Jewish Hospital for Consumptives. These visitors spent much of the day discussing and arguing their opinions on various issues of the time as most were very passionate about politics. Of all the speakers, Golda found herself most intrigued by and invested in the Social Zionists due to her understanding of their aspirations for a national home for the Jews in Palestine. They wanted “one place on the face of the earth where Jews could be free and independent”.4 The political atmosphere did not escape Golda even when she returned home to her parents due to her mother’s generosity in opening her home to Jewish Legion soldiers fighting with the British army to liberate Palestine from the Turks and her father’s deep involvement with the Jewish community and his numerous socialist colleagues, known as Labor Zionists, which frequented the family’s home. When Golda was still in high school, World War I broke out in Europe and with the war came an increase in pogrom activities as the White Russian Army and German Army slaughtered the Jews they found in their paths.

4Golda Meir, My Life (New York 1975) pp. 46

It became clear to her that the establishment of a Jewish homeland was no longer a mere dream but had to become a tangible goal, after all, what hope would be left for the Jews in a world that maintains such hate towards them? At the age of seventeen, Golda joined the Labor Zionist Party called the Poale Zion. Her mission was to save up the funds necessary to facilitate her move to Palestine and help in the creation of a land built for the Jews. She continued studying towards her degree in teaching while working part-time at a Yiddish-speaking school which advocated Labor Zionism. She, however, felt removed from the goals she had initially set for herself upon joining the organization and decided to speak for the Poale Zion. She was quickly recognized for her talent as a public speaker and was soon sent to numerous conferences as a representative lecturer in order to educate young American Jews in the ideologies of Labor Zionism. Even her father, who initially objected to this position she had been awarded as a speaker, lost his stance on the matter once he heard her eloquent speech to a crowd listening on a street corner in Milwaukee.

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With the help of her sister’s Zionist friend, Chaim Weizmann, and his connections to the British government, which were obtained through his sale of the discovery of the production of synthetic cordite (an explosive which greatly aided the British war effort), a man named Arthur James Balfour, the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, and several other influential British leaders supported the Zionist plan for Palestine. The Balfour Declaration was then issued on November 2, 1917 which stated that the British government supports the establishment in Palestine as a national home for the Jews. While the declaration was ambiguous in regard to ...

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