Fredonia Shakespeare Club discusses Golda Meir and her impact
The Fredonia Shakespeare Club met for its 16th regular meeting of the 2016-2017 year at Lanford House, hosted by Pat McQuiston. President Judi Lutz Woods presided with 15 members present and welcomed them to the 131st year of the club.
The topic for the year is “Women Artists, Authors, Designers and Entrepreneurs.” Linda Dunn presented her paper on “Golda Meir: Golda Shoes.” Her paper is summarized as follows:
Golda Meir (nee Mabovitch), born in 1898 in Kiev, Russia, was the sixth child of seven, four having died within their first year of birth. Hunger, poverty, and fear of pogroms (anti-Semitic mob violence) are among her earliest childhood memories. Nine years her senior, her sister Sheyna, a member of the Paole Zion, Labor Zionist movement, had an enormous influence on her life. Sheyna taught Golda to read, do arithmetic and think. Golda said: “I must have begun when I was six or seven to grasp the philosophy of everything that Sheyna did. Nothing in life just happens. It isn’t enough to believe in something; you must have stamina to meet obstacles, to overcome them, to struggle.”
By 1905, Golda’s mother, Blume, was quite fearful for the safety of her family. Sheyna’s activism was endangering them all. Moshe, Golda’s father, had sailed to America in 1903 to look for work. Employed, at last, he arranged passage for his family to the U.S. They settled in Milwaukee. Golda attended public school. Although the family spoke only Yiddish at home, she quickly learned English, and at the age of 14 was valedictorian of her elementary school class. She dreamed of going on to high school and eventually becoming a teacher, which she considered to be “the most noble profession of all.” Her mother had other ideas, which included working in her store and getting married “sooner than later.” She reminded Golda that according to Wisconsin law, married women were not allowed to become teachers.
Golda moved to British mandate Palestine in 1921 with her husband, Morris Meyerson, who she married Dec. 24, 1917. They worked on Kibbutz Merhavia for two years until Morris became ill. They had two children, Menachem and Sara. The marriage ended in separation.
When Golda was 71 and Prime Minister of Israel, she went back to visit her Fourth Street elementary school.
“It was mostly a black student population… they welcomed me like I was a queen. In the auditorium they sang Yiddish and Hebrew songs, and the Hatikvah, the Israel national anthem…I decided to tell those eager, attentive children, born as I myself had been into a minority, and living as I myself had lived, without much extravagance, (to put it mildly) — what the gist of that learning had been. It isn’t really important to decide when you are very young just exactly what you want to become when you grow up. It is much more important to decide on the way you want to live. If you are going to be honest with yourself and honest with your friends, if you are going to get involved with causes which are good for others, not only yourselves, then it seems to me that is sufficient, and maybe what you will be is only a matter of chance.”
Golda’s life was mirrored in that advice. She worked in leadership positions in the Histadrut Federation of Public Works, and the Jewish Agency, and served through the terrible years of Arab riots and British indifference and restrictions on Jewish immigration during WWII. A short time before Israel declared statehood on May 14, 1948, she traveled to the U.S. with $10 in her pocketbook on an urgent mission to raise funds to buy arms to defend the still un-born Jewish state. She left one month later with $50 million.
“The day when history is written,” David Ben Gurion told her, “it will be recorded that it was thanks to a Jewish woman that the Jewish state was born.” She was among the 24 signatories to the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
Golda Meir passed away on Dec. 8, 1978. She had served as Minister of Labor (1949), Foreign Minister (1956), and as Prime Minister Israel (1969-74). Egyptian president Anwar Sadat sent a note of condolence, which was printed on the front page of the Jerusalem Post.
“As I offer you my heartfelt condolences, I must note for the sake of history, that she was an honest adversary in the circumstances of confrontation between us, which we all hope is ended forever.”
“I credit her — as we pursue efforts to achieve an overall and lasting peace for the peoples of the region — for her undeniable role in the process of peace, when she signed with us the first Sinai disengagement accord. She proved herself always to be a political leader of the first category worthy of holding in your history a position commensurate with the position she held in your leadership.”
The members were called to tea by McQuiston, where Joan Larson assisted at the tea table.
The next meeting of the Club was held on Thursday, Feb. 23, hosted by Mary Jane Covley Walker, where McQuiston was to present her paper on “Virginia Woolf.”
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