Golda by Elinor Burkett Read Free Book Online Page B

searching for the meaning of life, not Jewish liberation. And he dreamed of a quiet life of children and fam- ily in America, not in some malarial swamp.
    Golda tried reason, persuasion, and manipulation. When all else failed, she resorted to the tactic that would become a staple in her arse- nal, an ultimatum: Move to Palestine with me or there will be no wed- ding. There was something hard in that ultimatum, a blindness or deep indifference to who Morris was, to anything but what she wanted.
    Sheyna, with whom Golda had mended fences, was appalled. “I don’t want to shatter your dreams,” she wrote from Denver. “I know what it means. But, Goldie, don’t you think there is a middle field for idealism right here on the spot?”
    Morris refused to be blackmailed, and, in a snit, Golda accepted an invitation from the Chicago chapter of Poale to work in their office. But after a few months, like almost everyone in Golda’s life, he gave in. In the fall of 1917, he offered to move to Palestine with her if she would marry him immediately.
    On the day before Christmas 1917, a small group of friends and family gathered at the home of Golda’s parents to witness the ceremony. Golda had no bridesmaids, no caterer, and no fancy dress. In keeping with her self-image as a pioneer, she wore a plain gray crepe de chine outfit—“the plainest of plain,” as she described it—and Bluma served boiled potatoes, herring, and sponge cake. But for once, Golda bowed to her mother’s wishes, forgoing a civil ceremony for a rabbi and a chuppah.
    To Golda’s dismay, and Morris’ relief, the young couple couldn’t leave immediately for Palestine because all transatlantic passenger service had been canceled for the duration of the war. They had time, then, time to save money for the trip, to develop as a couple, to establish a routine. Time, in Morris’ fantasy, for Golda to change her mind.
    To any objective observer, that was unlikely since the dream of a Jewish homeland seemed tantalizingly close to fruition. The British foreign sec- retary, Arthur James Balfour, had just issued a letter announcing a new foreign policy initiative. “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” he wrote,” and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this objective.”
    The declaration was, in part, a gift to Chaim Weizmann, a British Jewish chemist who’d developed a new process to synthesize acetone, an essential component in the production of cordite essential for the am- munition Britain needed to win the war. Lord Balfour had asked what
    payment Weizmann wanted in return for use of his process. A national home for my people, he replied.
    Balfour’s letter was an extraordinary document in which “one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third,” as author Arthur Koestler put it. But the British weren’t quite as brazen as Koestler and most Zionists thought. The declaration contained a clear caveat: nothing should be done in pursuit of that homeland which might preju- dice the rights of existing communities in Palestine.
    Morris painted signs when he could find work, and Golda found a job at the Lapham Park Library for 20 cents an hour. But they never spent much time together. There was always a Zionist emergency. Faced with a weekly newspaper that was bleeding money, the Poale board debated whether to close it. Undaunted by either finances or lack of manpower, Golda proposed that they turn it into a daily—and volunteered to do more work.
    When the American Jewish Congress was organized, she campaigned tirelessly for Zionist delegates. Shortly before the community election, Golda and her cohort showed up at a major synagogue and asked to speak. The synagogue leadership refused, so Golda waited for the service to end and then stood on a bench outside to harangue the congregants filtering out. “My fellow brethren, it is