Golda

 

Golda – Elinor Burkett

I don’t think I’ve ever read a biography about someone with such a strong, overpowering personality as this effort about Israeli Prime Minister Gold Meir than this effort by author Elinor Burkett.  Golda Meir was fierce, opinionated, determined, yet mainly she was simply a human being who wanted the world to treat her and the Jewish people with dignity.

Meir was actually born in Kiev, part of the Russian empire right around the turn of the 19^th century.  For those who know history, they know that very few places and times have ever been kind to the Jewish people, and Russia was one of the worst.  As an introduction, we learn of young Golda’s torrent life; always fleeing from persecutions and pogroms, so much that her family, like so many of others, come to America to search for a better life.

Being a Jew has never been easy, regardless of locale. Yet Milwaukee is far better than Russia. Golda becomes a young adult right around the end of the first World War and the Balfour declaration which, well, I guess you could say was advantageous to the European Jewish population.  Golda quickly becomes an activist, and with her new young husband, sets off to Palestine to help the fledging young locale.  Such an effort demands grit and sacrifice.  She soon becomes a mother, yet Golda isn’t particularly suited for home life. As great as a leader as she would come to be (and we already see examples of this in her young adulthood) she wasn’t a very good wife and mother.

We can almost excuse this, though. There is a lot of work forming a nation for her dispersed people, and through a lot of coffee, cigarettes, and various ailments, Golda Meir has what it takes.  It’s not easy. It’s never easy. Being a woman definitely doesn’t help, but such a handicap is quickly overlooked due to her ferocious persistency. There is an awful lot of politics here, but that should be expected.

She rises in the ranks; eventually becoming Prime Minister, but again, nothing is never easy. We then must remember the turbulent history of Israel once it becomes a state. Imagine the whole world bullying you when the only thing your country is really guilty of is winning wars that other countries keep starting.  So Golda perseveres. She has a sharp mind and an acerbic tongue, yet she never really says or demands anything out of the ordinary that someone in her position would want.

A book that’s both sad and yet somewhat uplifting.  Sad because of the history of the Jewish people; never easy even in the twentieth century. Yet uplifting when someone with so much determination is able to make positive dents despite the insurmountable odds.  An incredible figurehead.