![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/revivim197105__1__1645255754-1.jpg\")
Golda Meir and David Ben-Gurion first met in 1917 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was a socialist and Zionist, full of youth and passion, and he was an exile from the Land of Israel who had come to the States after the Turks expelled anyone prominently tied to the Zionist movement. His visit to Milwaukee lasted just one day, but it was a very significant day for the local Jewish residents, to whom the Zionist youths from Palestine must have seemed like messengers from another world.<\/p>\n
The first meeting between them was one-sided \u2013 Ben-Gurion didn\u2019t really \u201cmeet\u201d Golda that day, as she was part of the broader audience that came to hear him, but she was deeply impressed by the man who seemed to have an aura of endless confidence about him.<\/p>\n
Their second meeting was in Tel Aviv. Golda arrived in the country in July 1921, along with her new husband and sister, at the end of a trip full of travails that seemed like it came out of a popular adventure book.<\/p>\n
Ben-Gurion returned to the Land of Israel in August of that year, after years of exile and without Paula and the kids, who remained behind in London. He lived in a rented room on Lilienblum Street, where a group of young Zionist leaders would gather from time to time to hear what he had to say. On one of these occasions, Golda was also invited, having spent a number of years as a Po\u2019alei Zion (“Workers of Zion”) activist in America. She was now starting to make her political and professional way in this new land, and didn\u2019t even have a command of Hebrew, yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understood very little of what he said,\u201d Golda later said of their first encounter in the Land of Israel, \u201cbut I was very impressed by this persona, and how people listened to him.\u201d<\/p>\n From here on out, their political careers would develop separately, but they crossed paths again at many points and often met professionally.<\/p>\n In 1920, Ben-Gurion was among the founders of the general workers’ union known as the Histadrut and was appointed its general secretary in 1921. Even at this early point, he already stood out as the most prominent leader among the Jewish pioneers of the Second Aliyah (the immigration wave of 1904-1914).<\/p>\n In those years, Golda was a member of the Ahdut Ha\u2019Avoda (“Labor Unity”) party – later to become part of Mapai (a Hebrew acronym standing for “Workers’ Party of the Land of Israel”). She began to stand out among Zionist women\u2019s organizations, first as a member of the \u201cfemale workers\u2019 council\u201d and then as secretary of the council. She later took many trips to engage in fundraising and diplomacy in Britain, serving as a delegate at the global conference of the Zionist women\u2019s organization WIZO as well as the 16th<\/sup> World Zionist Conference.<\/p>\n In 1930, Mapai was founded as a merger of smaller parties, becoming the political home for both Golda and Ben-Gurion from this point forward. Ben-Gurion was head of the movement, while Golda placed 20th<\/sup> in the third election to the Assembly of Representatives, the local Jewish internal parliament, which sufficed for her to become a member of the assembly.<\/p>\n Over time, Golda turned from an admirer observing the movement\u2019s undisputed leader from a distance to an inseparable part of the Zionist leadership\u2019s inner circle. Beyond her official work, she also developed close ties with Ben-Gurion and his political partners (including long, complex romantic affairs with David Remez and Zalman Shazar).<\/p>\n Only towards the end of her life, when she was already a former Prime Minister and Ben-Gurion had passed away, did Golda Meir tell of the deep emotional connection she formed with him already in those early years. Before this, they had been regarded as having a professional relationship of two people sharing the same political causes.<\/p>\n When she spoke of young Ben-Gurion in an interview<\/a> she gave journalist Yaron London in 1974, her voice took on an uncharacteristic softness.<\/p>\n She tells of a Ben-Gurion who was a little different than his popular persona, as only those closest to him experienced the contrasts in the personality of the \u201cOld Man.\u201d He was in fact a charismatic speaker who suffered from social anxiety: on stage, at public speeches, he always seemed fearless and inspiringly confident in his path, but among his close circle or when he had to speak with someone privately \u2013 things were entirely different. He was surprisingly shy; in one-on-one meetings, his words would get tangled up when he needed to have them flow freely.<\/p>\n For instance, he was very close to Rachel Yanait and Yitzhak Ben Zvi, but he personally told Golda that shortly after he arrived in the country, he went on a long walk with Rachel Yanait during which he made not a sound. As he later admitted – \u201cI didn\u2019t know how to speak then, or what one is supposed to talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n When he was offered to become Chairman of the Jewish Agency, he thought he might have to go to the British High Commissioner and speak with him, and he shared his dilemmas with Golda: \u201cHow do I talk to him? What do I say to him\u201d?<\/p>\n Golda did not consider this a mark against his leadership \u2013 perhaps even the opposite.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s character. He needed to overcome it, and he did. There was no-one who spoke with him and left feeling, ‘Nu<\/em>, so I’ve met another random person…’\u201d<\/p>\n Golda told of how Ben-Gurion wasn’t one for idle chit-chat:<\/p>\n \u201cBen-Gurion was generally a man who didn\u2019t need people around him. Every one of us could sit with friends and talk about all sorts of things \u2013 even without a purpose, just to chat. Ben-Gurion was never a part of that. Everyone knew \u2013 with Ben-Gurion you don\u2019t chat, you talk to the point. About things that must be spoken of.\u201d<\/p>\n She heeded this unwritten rule: In the many decades of her acquaintance with Ben-Gurion, it never occurred to her to go to his house for a casual sit-down. If she had \u2013 it would have come off as odd, and he would immediately ask what happened.<\/p>\n Except once. One Saturday afternoon in Autumn, 1947, Golda received a strange phone call. Ben-Gurion was on the line, asking her to come to him \u2013 without a specific purpose. When she arrived, she found him on the second floor, which she had never been invited to before. It was a huge room with the walls covered in books, and Ben-Gurion was pacing back and forth, restless. He told her things which would have shaken many at that point in time, before the State of Israel had even been born: \u201cGolda, I\u2019m not sleeping at night, I don\u2019t know what will be with us. There will be a war, that is clear, I know what we have, but I don\u2019t know what will be, how we\u2019ll handle it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have contempt for those who are afraid,\u201d he continued, \u201cHere, [Zionist leader Yosef] Sprinzak is afraid, but he has the courage to say he\u2019s afraid. Sometimes there\u2019s a lot of courage in saying you\u2019re afraid. And even Sprinzak doesn\u2019t yet know how much we need to be afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n It was the first time she had the feeling that he could not cope with the crucial dilemmas all by himself, and that he needed someone to whom he could pour out his heart and present his concerns. She was that person for him.<\/p>\n At this rare opportunity, he let her enter a place almost no-one got a glimpse of<\/p>\n This soft side of Ben-Gurion was something Golda Meir also witnessed after the state was established. During the War of Independence, she would enter the room and see him sign letters to bereaved parents. This was not the Ben-Gurion people knew \u2013 the decider, the man who was always strongly opinionated, the one who didn\u2019t give a damn. Here, he gave a damn. A lot. And he let her see that.<\/p>\n These anecdotes tell us not only of Ben-Gurion\u2019s private, inner world, but also the place Golda had in that world. Despite this, and although they marched together towards common causes for many years, Golda couldn\u2019t see herself as his equal. \u201cWho was I? I was a girl from Milwaukee, and he? He was Ben-Gurion.\u201d<\/p>\n At Ben-Gurion House in Tel Aviv, which served as the permanent residence of David and Paula Ben-Gurion from the 1930s until they moved to Sde Boker in the Negev Desert, collections of photographs and albums can be found alongside the voluminous books. These tell the story of Ben-Gurion, the leader and the man, and of his widespread contacts around the world. Among these are also unofficial, rare images of him with Golda, where we can see something of their gentle relationship.<\/p>\n The photo albums have been digitized thanks to the collaborative efforts of the Ben-Gurion House Archive, the Ministry of Heritage and Jerusalem, and the National Library of Israel, and can be viewed here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n On May 14, 1948, they both signed the Declaration of Independence. He stood and declared the Jewish state, and she was one of just two Jewish women whose signatures can be found on that important historical document. After the declaration, of all the signatories and those present in the room, Ben-Gurion decided to walk with her to Dizengoff Square to meet the cheering crowd. He spoke to them with restraint, a leader who understood the weight and enormity of the event and who feared what they were about to face. It was Golda, now fluent in Hebrew, who spoke with enthusiasm and passion, doing so with a heavy American accent.<\/p>\n Immediately afterwards, that same day, she left to raise funds in the United States at Ben-Gurion’s request, even though the last thing she wanted was to be away from the country during that eventful period.<\/p>\n She believed in him and his decisions wholeheartedly, and sat as a minister in his (many) governments. Even if they disagreed here and there, she often said that \u201cregarding the major goals, on the path we had to take, he was always right.\u201d<\/p>\n When she traveled abroad, they corresponded; Ben-Gurion found it easier to express his feelings in writing.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re missed here, these days, by all of us, but especially me. Yet it seems to me that the historical struggle being waged in New York and Washington requires your stay in the US\u201d<\/p>\n The unique relationship between the two held until the 1960s, when politics tore them apart in a way Golda could not imagine. \u201cThe Lavon Affair\u201d was a complex political crisis which began with the colossal failure of certain intelligence operations in Egypt, and went on to split and divide the Mapai political leadership, eventually leading to the end of Ben-Gurion’s political career.<\/p>\n Golda called it \u201cthe miserable, tragic dispute that didn\u2019t have to happen,\u201d but these words do not suffice to describe her great pain over the rift, which she considered to be a personal disaster.<\/p>\n In a soul-baring interview to Yaron London conducted after Ben-Gurion\u2019s death, she was hardly willing to talk about that period, which was terrible for her. \u201cI always understood Ben-Gurion\u2019s motives, but here I didn\u2019t understand anything, beginning to end.\u201d<\/p>\n After decades of close acquaintance and friendship, in which he deeply influenced her political thought and activism, to break away from him and even see him as being in the \u201cenemy camp\u201d was unbearable.<\/p>\n \u201cBen-Gurion was no \u2018vegetarian\u2019 in the partisan war, or in the war for what he thought was the right thing, and neither was I,\u201d she told London with a pained half-smile.<\/p>\n When Ben-Gurion celebrated his 80th<\/sup> birthday, she didn\u2019t come to the event and he was deeply hurt.<\/p>\n But she never stopped appreciating him. At election events in those days, she spoke often of his enormous contributions, even calling him \u201cthe greatest Jew of our generation.\u201d Still, reconciliation was difficult and it only happened years later.<\/p>\n In 1970, when she was already Prime Minister, Golda asked Ben-Gurion to represent the Israeli government in Paris along with Zalman Shazar at the public funeral of Charles de Gaulle. But the real gesture of reconciliation came from Ben-Gurion, a year later.<\/p>\n In September 1971, he came to the 50th<\/sup> anniversary celebration of Golda Meir\u2019s arrival in the Land of Israel. Golda was deeply impressed by his very presence, but she also received a gift: a copy he kept of a telegraph she sent him from America for his 75th<\/sup> birthday.<\/p>\n \u201cNo dispute that was or yet will be between us,\u201d Golda wrote in that telegraph, \u201cwill erase my recognition that I was exceptionally merited to work with a man who was more responsible than anyone else for what we have here.\u201d<\/p>\n Later at the party, Ben-Gurion got on stage, but had some trouble finding the simple words to express what he felt. So he instead read letters aloud, letters he\u2019d written in the past, either to her or about her.<\/p>\n The first contained words he wrote to [Israeli diplomat] Abba Eban:<\/p>\n \u201cGolda is more important to Israel that a few million dollars, so you should do your best that she not work \u2026 and rest a bit during her stay in England.\u201d<\/p>\n The second was a letter he sent her himself, while she was in the US:<\/p>\n \u201cDear, beloved Golda, I learned your secret. This year you’ve reached the age of 60, although I know you don\u2019t want to celebrate your birthday, since you do not like publicity and personal celebrations. But after all, you cannot prevent me from congratulating you and telling you that which I feel, that your birthday is but a convenient opportunity to reveal some of my appreciation and friendship and love \u2026 an exemplary figure, a good friend, both strict and forgiving \u2026 I see you, and I am not alone, at your full creative powers, and my most faithful hopes for you that your strength will last many more years, and the trust and appreciation which most of the people in Israel as well as American Jewry feel for you will keep you steady during the difficulties you encounter as does every one of us.<\/p>\n Yours,<\/p>\n David Ben-Gurion.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/\u05d2\u05d5\u05dc\u05d3\u05d4-\u05de\u05d0\u05d9\u05e8-\u05d5\u05d3\u05d5\u05d3-\u05d1\u05df-\u05d2\u05d5\u05e8\u05d9\u05d5\u05df-\u05d1\u05e7\u05d5\u05e0\u05d2\u05e8\u05e1-\u05d4\u05d0\u05d9\u05e0\u05d8\u05e8\u05e0\u05e6\u05d9\u05d5\u05e0\u05dc-\u05d4\u05e1\u05d5\u05e6\u05d9\u05d0\u05dc\u05d9\u05e1\u05d8\u05d9-1928.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/\u05d1\u05df-\u05d2\u05d5\u05e8\u05d9\u05d5\u05df-\u05d5\u05d2\u05d5\u05dc\u05d3\u05d4-\u05d1\u05d8\u05e7\u05e1-\u05e4\u05ea\u05d9\u05d7\u05ea-\u05d4\u05e8\u05db\u05d1\u05ea.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/\u05ea\u05de\u05d5\u05e0\u05d4-\u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/DeclarationOfIndependence.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/\u05de\u05de\u05e9\u05dc\u05ea-\u05d9\u05e9\u05e8\u05d0\u05dc-\u05d1\u05db\u05e0\u05e1\u05ea-\u05d4\u05e9\u05dc\u05d9\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/NNL_ARCHIVE_AL11453317960005171_IE189895364_FL189895386.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/revivim1971_1645255754.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/NNL_ARCHIVE_AL11474772320005171_IE198983128_FL198983140.jpg\")