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Article Excerpt
As Zeev Jabotinsky wrote, "Everyone writes memoirs; if someone doesn't ... it begins to raise doubts.... [But] real memoirs require one to tell 'the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.' This I cannot promise. Memoirs are literary works ... and in them it's probably better to mix poetry and truth...." (1)
Scholars must adhere to Jabotinsky's cautionary note. We assume that autobiographical writings are hardly accurate and reliable; most often they are a self-conscious effort to present a selective and distorted portrait of the author, often omitting significant and revealing truths. All serious historians, therefore, confront the problem of separating historical reality from autobiographical self-construction.
But an even more imposing challenge awaits the historian examining the autobiographies of Zionist leaders. In addition to their attempts at self re-creation, almost all the icons of Zionism's formative period exploited their autobiographies as tools for reinforcing the foundation myths of the Zionist revolution. In so doing, they provided justification not only for their own lives but also for the transformation of the Jewish people in which they had played a major role.
Though the autobiography of Golda Meir presents an exception to this general pattern, and though she is clear about the fact that she was neither a feminist nor sympathetic to the feminist movement, nevertheless in biography after biography she is portrayed as an ideal woman, not only as "the uncrowned queen of Israel" but also as "Israel's intrepid grandmother," a successful politician who was also the essence of motherly "warmth and wisdom." Why do Meir's biographers persist in portraying her as a legend, even as they are aware that they are often manipulating or hiding facts in order to reinforce "the story of an 'image.'" Why have authors, primarily those from outside Israel, continued to use Golda Meir as a symbol designed to inspire women all over the world? (2)
Perhaps by looking closely at several of these biographies and by taking into account each biographer's background and motivation, we can arrive at a better understanding of how "Golda" serves the need for myth in women's lives, even as she also serves the need for myth in Zionist historiography.
The Biographer as Hagiographer
Until her death, Meir's primary biographer was one of her most intimate associates, Marie Syrkin. Syrkin was the American daughter of Nahman Syrkin, a major theorist of Socialist Zionism who chose in 1907 to settle in the United States instead of Palestine. When he moved to America, Syrkin became the leader of American Po'alei Zion (Workers of Zion) and, after his death in 1924, Marie carried on his Labor Zionist work, albeit also from an American vantage point. Though she was a popular and sought after lecturer, probably her most significant contribution in spreading the ideas of Labor Zionism was as editor of its English language journal, Jewish Frontier. (3)
Marie Syrkin first met Meir in the early 1930s,, and from then on they remained in frequent contact. (4) She wrote her first biography of Meir, Way of Valor, in 1955, subsequently revised it as Golda Meir: Woman With A Cause (1963), and later updated and published it as Golda Meir: Israel's Leader (1969). In 1973, she edited an "oral autobiography" of Golda that appeared in the United States as A Land of Our Own and in England as Golda Meir Speaks Out. Syrkin wrote the Encyclopedia Judaica entry on Golda Meir and was also the major source for subsequent biographers of Meir, who both interviewed Syrkin and extensively cited her published work. (5)
Clearly, then, Marie Syrkin was more than a close friend. She also played a major role in publicizing the facts of Meir's life and in helping to keep her memory alive. (6) What is not clear, however, is to what extent Marie Syrkin understood that she was writing from an especially hagiographic perspective, intent on creating and perpetuating a myth that to an extensive degree she helped invent.
In Golda Meir: Israel's Leader, Syrkin establishes her tone on the first page and never deviates from it. (7) Though acknowledging that in 1969 Meir was a compromise selection as prime minister, she cites the "dynamic, forceful pace" that Meir would bring to the job and repeats the Israeli quip (often, within the Israeli context, used mockingly) that "Golda is the strongest man in the country." (8) Before finishing the next two pages, the reader knows that Meir is (again) "dynamic," "a beguiling variant of the American success story," "a legend," "one of the founders of the Jewish state," and "a woman of action on a grand scale." We also know that her supposed feminine characteristics, among them a frank "'emotionalism,'" in no way would detract from her new role as "clearheaded statesman." This is because there have been "no deviations in her biography," and because she would use her "maternal passion" to safeguard the "rebirth" of Israel, to which she contributed so forcefully in the past. (9)
With this three-page introduction the stage has been set. Syrkin portrays Meir as someone who throughout her entire life has shown an independent strong will and intellect, "one of those to whom questions present themselves in their clear essence," a doer rather than a debater, someone who has always had the "'courage of her convictions.'" (10) She addresses at length what she defines as "the central issue of [Meir's] young womanhood," that is, whether a "woman's place" should remain within "hearth and home" or extend to the "public area." (11)
Writing in the 1960's, Syrkin cleverly places Meir's dilemma within the context of the emerging American feminist movement, allowing not only young Jewish women but also the wider range of newly sensitive American women to identify with her. Syrkin well understands this; her descriptions of Meir's early years of marriage are right in tune with the issues Betty Friedan presented in The Feminine Mystique. (12) She underscores Meir's recollection that the four years she spent as housewife, cook, and mother to two young children were the "most wretched" of her life. "What she could not bear was being swallowed up by her home to the exclusion of every other interest. Her sense of isolation was intolerable." (13) But Syrkin had already portrayed the relationship between Meir and her husband as "doomed ... the battle had been lost at the outset." Characteristically, Syrkin dismisses the possibility that complex emotional forces may have influenced Meir, at least initially, to make some compromises with her husband, Morris. Instead, she places all the blame on Morris, citing his "tormented and clinging love ... his bondage" as the reason Meir lacked the strength to break away from him and the root of her persistent sense of guilt when she finally left. (14)
It is interesting to note that Meir herself was more perceptive--and in many ways may have been more in tune with the conflicted feelings of the many American women who, in the late 1960's, had begun to think of combining motherhood with a serious career. The contemporary reader could (and still can) identify with the way Meir framed the issue in her contribution to The Plough Woman, a collection of personal narratives written by the "woman pioneers in Palestine," first published by the American Zionist Pioneer Women's organization in 1930 and republished in 1975. (15) Syrkin quotes it here in its entirety and also includes it as "Women's Lib-1930" in her oral autobiographies; she, therefore, was well aware of how Meir perceived the matter. Taken as a whole, the inner struggles and the despairs of the mother who goes to work are without parallel in human experience. But within that whole there are many shades and variations.... There is a type of woman who cannot ... divorce herself from the larger social life. She cannot let her children narrow her horizons. And for such a woman, there is no rest. Theoretically it looks straightforward enough.... And [inevitably] (16) the modern woman asks herself: Is there something wrong with me if my children don't fill up my life? Am I at fault if after giving them, and the one other person nearest to me a place in my heart, there is something left over which has to be filled by activities outside the family and the home? ... But the mother also suffers in the very work she has taken up.... And this eternal inner division, this double pull, this alternating feeling of unfulfilled duty--today toward her family,
the next day toward her work--this is the burden of the working
mother. (17) All this speaks for itself in expressing the true anguish at the choices Meir felt compelled to make. It is certainly adequate to inspire respect and to grant her an honored place in the pantheon of "modern" women. (18) Syrkin, however, is not content with making Meir a simple hero. She describes her activities on behalf of the developing yishuv Labor movement as "impressively courageous and self-denying," and concludes that the need of "the movement" for her "eloquence and energy" were enough to justify the personal compromises she felt compelled to make. And while Syrkin quite accurately stresses Meir's knowledge of English as an important factor in her success, her conclusion that because of it she became "invaluable as a delegate to Anglo-Saxon countries" is a good example of Syrkin's use of adjectives as a way of inflating her subject's importance (italics added). (19)
Of course, there was another reason why so many Diaspora women adored Meir. By the 1960's, it seemed natural to attribute "feminist" sympathies to any woman who had "made it," certainly one who had made it to the very top. Israelis knew that Golda was not a feminist; they had heard her many times make explicit statements denying any sympathy for the women's movement and rejecting any association with what she perceived as its wrongheaded and radical demands. Syrkin was also aware of Meir's view of her own womanhood. "For Golda a narrow insistence on woman's role as distinct from other sectors of the Palestine Labor movement never came easily." Syrkin is frank in acknowledging that Meir had not made a "cult of women's rights," instead taking feminine equality for granted. She understands, also, that from the moment Meir began her political activism, even before she moved to Palestine, she saw herself as a leader who happened to be a woman, rather than as a female leader. Syrkin probably identifies with Meir when she writes that, despite her appreciation for the special needs of women, she found the atmosphere within women's organizations constricting, and much preferred the challenges of working with men. (20)
Acknowledging that Meir did not fit into the "feminist" myth, Syrkin helps create another--the myth of the motherly/grandmotherly figure, always worrying about and taking care of the needs of her children, in this case Bnai Yisrael, the People of Israel. Syrkin's Meir is not glamorous; she is "plainly dressed, with hair severely parted in the middle." In the words of an American who heard her speak, Meir was "plain, so strong, so old fashioned--just like a woman out of the Bible." (21) Repeatedly, Syrkin sums up Meir's ongoing successes not in terms of her political skill or manipulativeness but in her ability to project all that "motherhood" had come to symbolize for earlier generations of Jews. Syrkin titles one of her chapters "At Home," when in fact the "home" referred to was Meir's official residence when she served as Israel's foreign minister. Here Syrkin lays the foundation for the often-repeated tale of how Meir would bring "a steaming pot of tea and a plate of cookies" for those assigned to guard the residence. In telling this story, Syrkin actually contradicts the impression conveyed by one of the soldier guards who claimed that, in fact, he had no personal contact with his boss: "I just salute." (22)
Similarly, when she compares Meir to Ben-Gurion, Syrkin ignores the ideological and political issues that ultimately came between them, and instead stresses their different styles. Meir, Syrkin claims, is not a charismatic figure like Ben-Gurion. Instead she "has her own homelier aura, a mother figure, heroine of ... decades of struggle." Unlike Ben-Gurion, then, she will never be rejected; what good Jew would thrust aside a "mother-heroine"? (23)
On this note Syrkin concludes Golda Meir. Her concluding chapter, "The Summons," describes the process that led to Meir's choice as prime minister in 1969 and to the...
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