Bubby

Golda Meir was not born into power. She was born into pogroms. On May 3, 1898, in Kiev, within the crumbling Russian Empire, a little Jewish girl named Golda Mabovitch entered the world with history already pressing against her door. Her earliest memory, as she would later recount, was watching her father hammer boards across the entrance of their home to keep out the mob. Violence was not abstract. It was the soundtrack of her childhood.

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Her family did what so many others had done in the early 20th century—they fled. In 1906, they found refuge in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was there that the seeds of Golda’s political soul took root. As a student, she organized fundraisers for classmates who could not afford textbooks. She gave speeches. She argued politics. She read fervently. Her home in Milwaukee was not a palace, but it became a crucible. In the smoky living room of her sister’s house in Denver, amid Zionists, labor organizers, suffragettes, and socialists, the young Golda absorbed ideas that would later shake the Middle East. It was also in Denver where she first felt the sting of gender expectations. Her mother wanted her to drop out of school and marry. Golda had other plans.

 She married Morris Meyerson in 1917, but their union was always more pragmatic than passionate. Golda had one non-negotiable clause: they would move to Palestine. And in 1921, they did. The young couple joined Kibbutz Merhavia, where Golda milked cows, dug ditches, and cooked in the communal kitchen. Her knack for leadership was soon apparent, and she became the kibbutz’s representative to the Histadrut, the powerful labor federation that would serve as a launching pad for Israel’s founding generation. This was not an easy life. The days were long, the heat unrelenting, and the resources sparse. Yet Golda thrived in the collective idealism of the kibbutz.

By the 1930s, Golda was rising fast in the labor movement. She traveled back to the United States as an emissary, raising funds and delivering speeches. She returned to Palestine in time to represent the Jewish community at the 1938 Evian Conference, where the world expressed its sorrow over Jewish refugees while slamming the doors of immigration. Golda did not forget. She would later say she hoped never again to see her people in need of sympathy rather than sovereignty. She was not content to be pitied. She wanted a Jewish state that could protect its own.

During World War II, as the Holocaust unfolded, Golda Meir worked tirelessly within the Jewish Agency. When the British arrested Jewish leaders in 1946 during Operation Agatha, she stepped in as acting head of the Political Department. Her efforts were not just bureaucratic. She met secretly with King Abdullah of Jordan, hoping to prevent Arab war against the soon-to-be-declared State of Israel. She also visited Jewish detainees in British-run camps in Cyprus, urging them to prioritize families with children for the narrow slots allowed into Palestine. She was everywhere and always in motion, driven by a sense of duty that bordered on the messianic.

In the months before independence, Meir did something extraordinary. She traveled to the United States to raise money. The Jewish Agency hoped for eight million dollars. Golda came back with thirty. She would later do it again, bringing the total to ninety million—more than a third of the entire war budget for the fledgling state. Ben-Gurion, the father of the nation, said she would go down in history as the woman who brought the money that made the state possible. Her speeches in American synagogues and community centers were not just fundraising pitches. They were calls to history.

On May 14, 1948, she was one of just two women to sign Israel’s Declaration of Independence. She cried as she did it. She would later recall reading about the American founding fathers in school and never imagining that she herself would one day be among such company. The moment was not just symbolic. It was transformative. It marked her as one of the midwives of a new nation.

Within days, she was dispatched as Israel’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union. It was a lonely and difficult post, but she made headlines when she was mobbed by thousands of Russian Jews chanting “Nasha Golda” outside a Moscow synagogue. For a people trapped behind the Iron Curtain, she was a vision of freedom. Soviet authorities were not amused. Meir’s presence sparked a wave of antisemitic crackdowns, but she had made her mark.

Back in Israel, Golda joined the Knesset in 1949 and was appointed Minister of Labor. These were her most beloved years in office. Between 1949 and 1956, she oversaw a whirlwind of housing and infrastructure projects. She built apartments, roads, hospitals, and schools. She took pride in the mundane. Bureaucratic? Perhaps. But she was laying bricks for a state that had barely begun to breathe. She also pushed for the integration of new immigrants and the creation of Israel’s social safety net. Her years at Labor were not glamorous, but they were effective. She fought for maternity leave, accident insurance, and benefits for widows and orphans. She helped shape the very idea of what it meant to be an Israeli citizen.

In 1956, Ben-Gurion appointed her Foreign Minister. She Hebraized her name from Meyerson to Meir, meaning “illuminates.” She did not love the job at first. Diplomacy was filled with handshakes and pomp. But she grew into it. She led delegations, negotiated arms deals, and built ties with newly decolonized African nations, arguing that Israel had unique knowledge to share about state-building under adversity. She was a realist but also a builder of bridges. One of her proudest accomplishments was securing the sale of Hawk missiles from the United States—a quiet but significant shift in U.S.-Israeli military relations.

Her foreign policy legacy was complex. She promoted alliances, but also controversy. She played a significant role in Israel’s coordination with Britain and France during the Suez Crisis. She was wounded by a grenade attack in the Knesset. And, in 1958, she controversially sought to restrict immigration of sick and disabled Jews from Poland, fearing the strain on Israel’s resources. It was a pragmatic, if painful, calculation. Behind the scenes, she fought with fellow ministers over spending, immigration, and strategy. She was never shy about her opinions. But she was often right.

Ill health forced her to step down in 1966. But she remained secretary-general of Mapai and helped orchestrate its merger into the modern Labor Party. When Prime Minister Levi Eshkol died suddenly in 1969, the party turned to Meir as a compromise candidate. At 71, she was reluctant. But she accepted. She always accepted when duty called. Her election was a testament to her reputation, her loyalty, and her ability to unite factions that had grown bitterly divided.

Her premiership began in relative calm and with overwhelming public support. The 1969 election was the most decisive in Israel’s history—50 seats for her Alignment faction. She traveled the world, met with Nixon, with the Pope, with Ceaușescu, and with Brandt. She pursued peace, but also hardened lines. In one now-infamous interview, she stated that there was no such thing as Palestinians, a view that has haunted her legacy. Critics saw it as a denial of reality. Supporters argued she was reflecting a political truth of the time.

Then came the Yom Kippur War. In October 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack. Israeli intelligence had failed to provide sufficient warning, and the military was caught off-guard. Golda Meir was told of the Syrian buildup but was reassured that war was unlikely. Only hours before the invasion, she authorized full military mobilization but refused a preemptive strike, fearing that it would jeopardize Israel’s standing with the United States.

The war cost thousands of lives and shattered Israeli confidence. Although the Agranat Commission later cleared her of direct responsibility, the public was not forgiving. She resigned in April 1974, saying simply that the burden had become too heavy. Yitzhak Rabin took her place. She left office exhausted, saddened, but without bitterness. She had given all she could.

In retirement, Golda remained a towering presence. She published her memoir, My Life, which became a bestseller. She spoke at the Knesset during Anwar Sadat’s historic visit in 1977, praising the Egyptian president’s courage. She died in 1978, at the age of 80, after a long battle with lymphoma. She was buried on Mount Herzl.

Golda Meir was a paradox. A socialist who loathed pomp but wielded power with unshakable resolve. A woman of deep Jewish identity who was personally secular. A mother of two whose marriage faded into polite distance as she marched into history. She was loved. She was loathed. She was never ignored.

Today, she is remembered in statues, schools, theaters, and currency. She has been played on screen by Helen Mirren, Ingrid Bergman, and Tovah Feldshuh. But beyond the bronze busts and Broadway plays, Golda Meir stands as a reminder that sometimes, the fate of nations rests not with generals or kings, but with a woman who once stood at a school podium in Milwaukee, raising money for books.

Her legacy is not tidy. She has been blamed for the Yom Kippur War, criticized for her denial of Palestinian nationhood, and hailed for her unshakable devotion to the Jewish people. But one thing is certain: Golda Meir did not watch history. She made it.