Golda Knew What She Wanted

Golda Meir would have been quite interesting to have met and spoken with. I have read her biography and spoken with people who knew her, but there is a difference between reading, hearing and knowing.

Just read this piece here and thought about how remarkable she was. Some of you will read these words and think of her in less than favorable terms, but consider who she was, when she lived and what she did.

Addicted to political activity

Even though Golda renounced family life to a great extent, she never renounced romance or intimacy. She was surrounded by admirers. According to Goldstein, the most prominent of them was Zalman Shazar, who had an intimate relationship with her for many years even though he was married to Rachel Katznelson, one of the leaders of the Yishuv, and according to rumor also had a stormy love affair with the poet Rachel (Bluwstein).

Golda had affairs with Shazar and David Remez at the same time.

Sometimes she would prefer Shazar, and at other times she would prefer Remez.

She had many other romantic relationships as well. In the Jewish Yishuv, rumors spread about affairs with Zalman Aran, who later became the secretary of Mapai, and later a member of Knesset and a government minister.

Another romantic partner was Yaakov Hazan, the leader of Hashomer Hatzair. But she gave her admirers only a little of her time.

Her days, nights, weekends and holidays were devoted to serving the party and the Histadrut, its institutions and its needs. “She was addicted,” Goldstein writes in his book, “obsessed with the political activity that filled her entire being.”

Later, Golda had an affair with Henry Montor, a good-looking and impressive Canadian, who was the vice president of the United Jewish Appeal and seven years her junior. According to the gossip at the time, she also had a relationship of sorts with Berl Katznelson. At the time, there were also rumors that she might have been involved with Ben-Gurion as well.