My Life: The Iron Lady of Israel, Golda Meir

Golda Meir, the only woman to head the state of Israel, was feisty, ground-breaking, and had a portrayal of a true Zionist woman. She was also called Israel's 'iron lady' who resigned after the Yom Kippur war, and then Israel was caught off-guard. The war is often referred to now as after 50 years, the world witnessed a similar situation. Maybe many would like to know about the situation then and about the history of Israel through the eyes of Golda Meir. This is an effort to present it, this is the latest edition of the book printed this year.

Childhood

Usually, the memories of childhood bring a smile and make one feel nostalgic, but this is not the case with Golda. She had very few happy or pleasant memories, she wrote. It could be summed up as the terrible hardships her family suffered, with poverty, cold, hunger, and fear. The family lived in Kyiv ( spelled as Kyiv now, then a part of Russia, now a part of Ukraine), and always dreaded pogroms, though it never materialized. She clearly was aware that it was happening to her as she was a Jew. Many times she had to undergo the 'fear, the frustration of being different'.

She described poverty as there was ' never enough of anything, not food, nor warm clothing, nor heat at home, a little cold outside and a little empty inside. She remembered herself sitting in the kitchen in tears, her mother feeding her younger sister the portion that belonged to her, her elder sister often fainted from hunger in school. In the later part of life, she had to experience the same fear and the dilemma of which child to get more food.

Despite all the difficult situations, on Friday nights, her house used to be full of most of her extended family members, they drank tea and sang together for hours. It was not a particularly religious household. None of them survived the Holocaust.

It was like most Jews lived in the towns and villages of Eastern Europe. All kept a separate calendar that was related to the land they exiled 2000 years ago.

Her father wanted to move to the city of Kyiv but unfortunately could not. He landed in a situation where he had no job no money but debt to repay. This crisis, Golda wrote, recurred throughout her childhood. He would desperately search for some job but rarely there used to be sufficient food on his return. Golda lost four of her siblings, after the death of the last one, her mother was offered to be a wet nurse, this could give her enough to eat and her family too.

The family went back to the city of Pinsk where they came from. Golda could never return to see either Keiv or Pinsk but she met people from the same area in the later part of her life. Leaving Keiv was difficult for Sheyna, Golda's sister who wanted to acquire knowledge to change and better the world. She was a revolutionary and a member of the socialist -Zionist movement, who dared to dream of a Jewish socialist state in Palestine. Her mother always begged her to have nothing with the movement as it was liable to punishment. Her attending meetings always made her mother worry.

Her sister Sheyna was one of the influences throughout her life, a friend, a mentor. Her praise and approval which was not easy to come, meant a lot to her.

Zionism was a movement that sprang spontaneously in many parts of Europe towards the end of the nineteenth century, Golda described it as a drama played in different languages, on different stages which dealt with the same problem of Jewish homelessness. It could not have been solved unless Jews had a land of their own again. It was Zion, which Jews were exiled from. It remained the spiritual center of Jews for 2,000 years. By the end of First World War it was a neglected and desolate desert province of the Ottoman Empire, she wrote.

Beginning of the Zion movement

The first group of Jews who returned to Zion as early as 1878, established a village they named Petach Tikvah, the Gate of Hope. Another small group arrived in Zion from Russia which was known as Hovevei Zion, the Lovers of Zion.

Theodor Herzl was not aware of this development then, but in 1894 he became interested, as Vienna newspaper Neue Freie Presse assigned him the task of covering the trial of Captain Dreyfus. It shook him. The injustice was done to the Jew officer caused by the open anti-Semitism of the French army. This compelled him to believe in the Jewish state. His unrelenting efforts are the part of history taught in Israel.