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Golda Meir

For all her grief and remorse over the Yom Kippur War, for all the humiliation and pain of her people’s rejection of her, she was nonetheless able in her final years to evolve into an elder statesman and beloved public citizen, a woman whom bus drivers insisted on taking to her front door and whom organizations clamored to honor. In time, her image regained its luster, and her reputation as a philosopher-comedian entered the realm of legend.

As a politician and Jewish nationalist, Meir was consistent, strong in her resolve, and undisturbed by nuance or self-doubts. The Zionist cause to her was a moral, historical, and political imperative. Though she was eager to make peace with “the Arabs,” and often begged for Arab recognition and Arab partners, her refusal to acknowledge the existence of “Palestinians” or, consequently, Palestinian suffering, was for many years a stumbling block to progress.

As a woman, on the other hand, Meir was a study in contradictions. Though her public persona was almost neuter, she was reputed to have had many lovers for many years. For

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Chronology of Golda Meir

1898: Meir is born Goldie Mabovitch on May 3, 1898 in Kiev, Ukraine (then part of Russia). She is one of eight children born to Moshe and Blume Mabovitch (or Mabowitz), five of whom (four boys and a girl) died in infancy. She is the middle child of the three surviving girls. Sheyna (or Shana) is the eldest and Zipke (later known as Clara) is the youngest. Her father is a carpenter/cabinet-maker and Golda is named for her maternal great-grandmother Golde who was known for her strong will and stubbornness. Early in life she witnesses the endemic anti-Jewish violence in Czarist Russia (the pogroms). The image of that anti-Semitism would remain with her and greatly influence the course of her life.

1903: Golda and the family move to Pinsk (in what is now Belarus), her mother’s original home. That year, a severe pogrom leads many Jewish communities in Russia to declare a fast in protest. Though not quite five, Golda insists on participating in the fast despite her family’s objections based on her age. Moshe Mabovitch departs for the United States and sett

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How did Golda Meir rise from crushing poverty to become a world leader—one whose handling of the 1973 Yom Kippur War cemented her reputation as Israel’s “Iron Lady”?

In 1898, the mere idea that a baby girl born to a poor Jewish family in Kiev in the twilight of Russia’s tsarist regime might become a prime minister wasn’t just laughable; it was inconceivable. In that era, young women were too often trapped by insufficient education, marriage, motherhood and the daily struggle to survive to even consider such ambitions.

Golda Mabovitch, one of eight children born to a carpenter and his wife in Kiev—who as a child experienced hunger and witnessed the terrifyingly violent anti-Jewish persecution known as pogroms—beat those odds. Golda Meir, as that baby would be known to history, rose to become one of the first women in the world to serve as a head of state, steering Israel through its early, troubled decades. While headlines trumpeted her 1969 ascension as “Grandmother Elected Prime Minister,” she was much more than a babka-baking bubbeh. Years before Soviet propagandists labeled B