Golda Meir

{{Audio|He-Golda_Meir.ogg|Golda Meir}} (Hebrew ?????????? ??????) (b. Golda Mabovitz; May 3, 1898 – December 8, 1978) was a founder of the State of Israel. She served as the Minister of Labor, Foreign Minister, and as the fourth Prime Minister of Israel from March 17, 1969 to April 111974. Golda Meir was the "Iron Lady" of Israeli politics years before the epithet was coined for Margaret Thatcher. David Ben-Gurion once described her as "the only man in the Cabinet." She is the first (and to date only) female Prime Minister of Israel, the third female Prime Minister in the world (after Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka and Indira Gandhi of India) , as well as the only former American citizen to hold the post (Benjamin Netanyahu is a native-born Israeli whose family moved to Philadelphia when he was a teenager; he moved back to Israel after graduate school and was never a U.S. citizen).

Emigration to the United States, 1906

Her father worked as a carpenter in Milwaukee and her mother ran a grocery store. Beginning when she was only eight years old, Golda oversaw the store for a short time each morning as her mother was buying supplies at the market.

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When she was 14, her mother suggested that she give up school for work and to marry an older man. Golda rebelled and ran away. She went to Denver, where her older sister, Sheyna, was living. Here she met Morris Myerson, a sign painter, who would later become her husband.

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She returned to Milwaukee at the urging of her father when she was 18. She began speaking and advocating. She hosted visitors from Palestine.

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She eventually graduated from the Milwaukee State Normal School (now University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) and taught in the public schools. She joined the Labor Zionist Organization in 1915. She married Myerson in 1917 and began planning to emigrate to the Land of Israel, then British Mandate of Palestine. The couple and her elder sister Sheyna emigrated to Palestine in 1921.

Related Topics:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee - Zionist - 1915 - 1917 - Land of Israel - British Mandate of Palestine - 1921

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