Golda Mabovitch Meir

A child of Jewish parents, Golda was born in Kiev, Russia. The family migrated to America when Meir was nine. Determined to get an education, Meir ran away from her parents’ home in Milwaukee to live with her sister in a Jewish neighborhood in Denver, where she enrolled in high school. At odds with her mother, Golda escaped plans for an arranged marriage to an older man and instead went to live with her sister, Sheyna and Sheyna’s husband in Denver. Sheyna would host visitors nightly, and Golda became fascinated with them, talking late into the night.  It was in Denver that she discovered Zionism. Enthralled by society’s debate over gender roles, the Social Zionist movement, and the future for Jewish people, she met Morris Meyerson, a Lithuanian immigrant who took her to park concerts and lectures. In 1917, they married, and soon sailed for Tel Aviv in Palestine. They soon had one son and one daughter, Menachem, and Sarah. Meir moved quickly up the political ladder and eventually became secretary of the Women’s Labor Council, which meant extensive travel, and that led to the end of  their marriage. The couple became legally separated up until Morris’s death in 1951. In 1948 she helped write the Israeli Declaration of Independence. At age 70, Meir became Israel’s fourth prime minister. Meir died of Lymphoma at her home in Jerusalem in December of 1978.

Books containing reference to Golda Meir: Jeanne Varnell “Women of Consequence”