“What happens when idealism becomes power?” –Todd Salovey
By Eric George Tauber
CARLSBAD, California–When we look at history with the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to dismiss how dire a situation really was. After all, we won. But the storyteller’s art is to bring us back to that moment when all was nearly lost and keep us on the edges of our seats. Such a storyteller is Rosina Reynolds and such a tale is that of Golda Meir during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. She tells us the story of her life between frantic phone calls, trying to reach Nixon and Kissinger who had promised her war planes for self defense.
Before she was a politician, she was Mamelè Golda, the Hausfrau who made chicken soup. Years later, as Prime Minister of Israel, she was settling quarrels among generals around a cabinet table.
She was born in Kiev, in the Russian Empire under the Czar in 1898. Fleeing pogroms, her family came to Milwaukee in 1906. It wasn’t exactly the “Promised Land,” but it was relatively free of Cossacks.
“Where nothing was, Israel is.”
In 1921, Golda and her husband Morris made aliyah to what was then the British Mandate in Palestine. They sailed as young, wide-eyed idealists only to eke out a hard scrabble life on a kibbutz with no running water. Life was hard, but it was home.
When the UN agreed to the partition of Palestine, the Arabs were not on board. Five Arab armies, well-stocked with Soviet arms, were determined to drive the nascent Israel into the Sea. David Ben Gurion sent Golda Meir to the US to fundraise for the war effort. She left immediately without packing a bag or even getting her coat. She came to a meeting of Jewish agencies in Chicago and was allowed to address the assembly.
“…You cannot decide whether we should fight or not. We will. The Jewish community in Palestine will raise no white flag for the Mufti. That decision is taken. Nobody can change it. You can only decide one thing: whether we shall be victorious in this fight or whether the Mufti will be victorious. That decision American Jews can make. It has to be made quickly within hours, within days.
And I beg of you—don’t be too late. Don’t be bitterly sorry three months from now for what you failed to do today. The time is now.”
She returned with $50 million (USD).
“Survival is maybe a synonym for ‘Jewish’.”
What kept her going was a memorial flame at Yad Vashem for the millions of victims of the Shoah and the words, “Never Again.” To her, Israel was more than country, more than a lofty ideal. Israel was the answer to pogroms, ghettoes and death camps. Israel was the last, best hope for the Jewish people.
There’s a lot more to the story, but I should let Rosina tell it. Personally, I camE away with a much clearer sense of the stakes and a greater respect for this remarkable woman who bore the weight of the world on her shoulders. Golda Meir was a woman of relentless conviction and determination. In Rosina Reynolds, she has found a kindred spirit.
If you would like to relive a pivotal moment in history and meet one of the people who made it happen, come up to New Village Arts for a story that is not to be missed.
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Tauber is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He may be contacted via eric.tauber@sdjewishworld.com. Comments intended for publication in the space below MUST be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the United States.)