friend Marie Syrkin asked another Merhavia member what Golda had been like, the woman recounted the story of a rainy day when a few residents were gathered in the kitchen peeling almonds. “Golda sat and appeared a little regal,” she recalled.
* * *
The kibbutz ethos didn’t put much stock in conferences and conven- tions. Sweat, toil, blisters, and calluses were the coin of that realm, not lofty rhetoric. No one objected, then, when the newcomer offered to represent Merhavia at the first convention of kibbutzim at Kibbutz De- gania. In fact, everyone was relieved they’d found someone willing to attend.
Degania was the mother ship, the lodestar of Labor Zionism. There, the notion of a collective community—no money, no salaries, no private property, no hired workers—became reality. And the convention was filled with the leading figures in the Second Aliyah, Golda’s Zionist icons: David Ben-Gurion, general secretary of the new Histadrut, the General Federation of Laborers; Levi Eshkol, leader of Degania’s spin- off, Degania Bet; Berl Katznelson, the philosopher king of the move- ment and the strategic genius behind the new worker’s party, Ahdut HaAvoda, Unity of Labor; David Remez, one of Katznelson’s hand- picked geniuses, who went on to help draft the declaration of indepen- dence.
Those were heady days in Palestine, as the yishuv, the Jewish com- munity, laid the first building blocks of an independent Jewish nation. Although Jews might be decades from having their own country, men like Ben-Gurion and Katznelson were already locked in struggle for control over the yishuv ’s current realities and the shape of the future nation.
Surrounded by Palestine’s luminaries, and halting, at best, in Hebrew, the language of all respectable pioneers, Golda was awed into silence. Just once did she dare address the group—to defend the honor of kibbutz kitchen work. “Why is giving food to people no less an honor than giving food to cows?” she asked, in Yiddish, repeating the argument she made endlessly at Merhavia. “It’s bad enough you speak Yiddish in Tel Aviv,” one of Degania’s founders scolded her. “In Degania, no.” The female delegates, veterans of the struggle for gender equality, booed. Golda burst out into tears.
It was the second time she had been slapped down by her idols, the first time by Ben-Gurion in Milwaukee. She straightened her spine and vowed to show them what she was made of.
The chicken coop didn’t feel very exciting after the gathering at Dega- nia, and Morris had fallen into depression, worn down both by work and by Golda’s indifference to his needs. To make matters worse, he was suf- fering from malaria despite the quinine pills served with the chickpea mush for breakfast.
“Ah, Palestine, Palestine, you beggarly little land, what will become of you?” he wrote his mother. “How ironic sound the lovely words at Poale Zion meetings about a free workers’ Palestine.”
But Golda had caught a glimpse of the Palestine she wanted to be part of and ignored Morris’ complaints. Careful to phrase her offer as another selfless act rather than as ambition, she suggested to her com- rades that she represent Merhavia at another meeting, of the Moetzet HaPoalot, the Women Workers’ Council. Everyone but Morris seemed happy to see her go.
The Council had been created a decade earlier to develop new
approaches to female employment, child care, and the training of female construction and agricultural workers. After World War I, it was clear they hadn’t made much headway. Irate at the continuing resistance to women’s equality, Ada Maimon, a Women’s Council activist, decided to force the issue at the founding convention of the Histadrut, the new worker’s cooperative organization launched by Ben-Gurion. She publicly demanded that the women’s group be merged into the Histadrut and be guaranteed representation on its executive bodies. If Ben-Gurion refused, she
* * *
The kibbutz ethos didn’t put much stock in conferences and conven- tions. Sweat, toil, blisters, and calluses were the coin of that realm, not lofty rhetoric. No one objected, then, when the newcomer offered to represent Merhavia at the first convention of kibbutzim at Kibbutz De- gania. In fact, everyone was relieved they’d found someone willing to attend.
Degania was the mother ship, the lodestar of Labor Zionism. There, the notion of a collective community—no money, no salaries, no private property, no hired workers—became reality. And the convention was filled with the leading figures in the Second Aliyah, Golda’s Zionist icons: David Ben-Gurion, general secretary of the new Histadrut, the General Federation of Laborers; Levi Eshkol, leader of Degania’s spin- off, Degania Bet; Berl Katznelson, the philosopher king of the move- ment and the strategic genius behind the new worker’s party, Ahdut HaAvoda, Unity of Labor; David Remez, one of Katznelson’s hand- picked geniuses, who went on to help draft the declaration of indepen- dence.
Those were heady days in Palestine, as the yishuv, the Jewish com- munity, laid the first building blocks of an independent Jewish nation. Although Jews might be decades from having their own country, men like Ben-Gurion and Katznelson were already locked in struggle for control over the yishuv ’s current realities and the shape of the future nation.
Surrounded by Palestine’s luminaries, and halting, at best, in Hebrew, the language of all respectable pioneers, Golda was awed into silence. Just once did she dare address the group—to defend the honor of kibbutz kitchen work. “Why is giving food to people no less an honor than giving food to cows?” she asked, in Yiddish, repeating the argument she made endlessly at Merhavia. “It’s bad enough you speak Yiddish in Tel Aviv,” one of Degania’s founders scolded her. “In Degania, no.” The female delegates, veterans of the struggle for gender equality, booed. Golda burst out into tears.
It was the second time she had been slapped down by her idols, the first time by Ben-Gurion in Milwaukee. She straightened her spine and vowed to show them what she was made of.
The chicken coop didn’t feel very exciting after the gathering at Dega- nia, and Morris had fallen into depression, worn down both by work and by Golda’s indifference to his needs. To make matters worse, he was suf- fering from malaria despite the quinine pills served with the chickpea mush for breakfast.
“Ah, Palestine, Palestine, you beggarly little land, what will become of you?” he wrote his mother. “How ironic sound the lovely words at Poale Zion meetings about a free workers’ Palestine.”
But Golda had caught a glimpse of the Palestine she wanted to be part of and ignored Morris’ complaints. Careful to phrase her offer as another selfless act rather than as ambition, she suggested to her com- rades that she represent Merhavia at another meeting, of the Moetzet HaPoalot, the Women Workers’ Council. Everyone but Morris seemed happy to see her go.
The Council had been created a decade earlier to develop new
approaches to female employment, child care, and the training of female construction and agricultural workers. After World War I, it was clear they hadn’t made much headway. Irate at the continuing resistance to women’s equality, Ada Maimon, a Women’s Council activist, decided to force the issue at the founding convention of the Histadrut, the new worker’s cooperative organization launched by Ben-Gurion. She publicly demanded that the women’s group be merged into the Histadrut and be guaranteed representation on its executive bodies. If Ben-Gurion refused, she
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