Our Golda by David A. Adler

First published: 1984

Type of work: Biography; children’s literature

Principal personages:

• Golda Meir, (1898-1978), one of the founders of the State of Israel and prime minister of Israel, 1969-1974
• Moshe Yitzhak Mabovitch, Golda’s father, a carpenter and cabinetmaker
• Blume Mabovitch, Golda’s mother
• Sheyna, Golda’s older sister, a Zionist
• Morris Meyerson, a cultured sign painter who eventually became Golda’s husband
• David Ben-Gurion, (1886-1973), the first prime minister of Israel

Overview

David A. Adler’s Our Golda: The Story of Golda Meir is a biography of Israel’s famous prime minister. Adler did not know Meir or her times personally, but he obviously admires her. His admiration adds a warmth to the text that is often missing from biographies of important but distant personages. The reader is drawn in closer yet by the soft black-and-white pencil illustrations by Donna Ruff. The twelve drawings of Meir and her family and compatriots help put a human face on the legend.

Meir’s story is told chronologically, with little dialogue or description. The emphasis is always on describing events and giving information, not on putting the reader at the scene. Each of the book’s five chapters is named for a different part of the world where Meir lived out an important stage in her development. The first chapter, “Kiev,” shows the strength of Meir’s parents and grandparents, who lived in poverty and oppression because they were Jews. This chapter provides an excellent overview of the hardships faced by Russian Jews in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Adler understands the power of the truth simply told, without dramatics. Golda Mabovitch is only the second of her mother’s first six children to survive. Her father leaves Russia for the Golden Land—the United States—to establish a better life for his family.

In the second chapter, the remaining family members are forced to move to Pinsk, within the Pale of Settlement for Jews. Life is even harder here, and the threat of pogroms is always present. As Golda grows up, she overhears and is fascinated by the planning of groups of Zionists. The third chapter, “Milwaukee,” covers the harrowing journey to the United States to join her father and follows Golda’s formal and informal education as a schoolgirl and as a Zionist. She struggles under her parents’ old-fashioned demands and their inability to understand her desire for education. They believe that education is wasted on a woman and that at fourteen Golda ought to be thinking of marriage. At fifteen, she runs away to Denver, where her older sister Sheyna lives, and becomes involved in Zionist activism. She meets Morris Meyerson, whom she will later marry.

The fourth chapter, “Palestine,” shows Golda and Morris settling on a kibbutz in Palestine, their name Hebraized to “Meir.” Golda becomes more and more involved politically, especially with labor issues, and less involved with her husband and children. She travels throughout Europe and North America seeking support for a Jewish state and refuge for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. In 1947, the United Nations votes to partition Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. The fifth chapter is titled “Israel,” and it begins with war against the Arab nations. Golda Meir again travels to North America, returning with millions of dollars for weapons, which help Israel prevail. She signs the Israeli Declaration of Independence, becomes minister of labor and then foreign minister, and retires in 1965. In 1969, Meir is elected prime minister, and she serves in that position through the Six-Day War, until her second retirement in 1974.

In Our Golda, Adler brings together several skills and interests demonstrated throughout his career, which has produced more than one hundred books for children and young adults: The book is nonfiction, features a strong female central character, and presents an important part of Jewish history and culture. These elements come up repeatedly in Adler’s work and help account for the continuing popularity of this biography.

For Adler, the line between fiction and nonfiction is a clear one. He stands at a respectful distance from his subject, presenting only information that he can somehow verify. He was not able (or did not seek) to interview family members or to examine private family documents. He is not himself a contemporary, able to recount his own sensations of the terror of the pogroms or the Holocaust. Most important, he does not attempt to fictionalize Meir’s life, to present words that she must have spoken under the circumstances or to describe how their family’s apartment probably looked. The tone and the stance throughout are somewhat distant, with a focus on actions and events rather than on motivations and feelings.

One happy result of this distance, of keeping the focus on events, is that the book avoids taking on a strident political voice of its own. Clearly, the central character is Golda Meir, and clearly she is working and fighting against great odds to create and maintain a Jewish homeland. Yet, Adler does not put in his characters’ mouths the arguments, the rhetoric, or the biblical quotations. He could easily supply adjectives for Meir, calling her “brilliant” or “righteous” or “wise,” and he could refer to Arabs as “misguided” or “evil,” but he does not. He presents events in clear factual language, with few adverbs or adjectives. He trusts the power of simple language to guide the reader gently: “During the next few months in Israel there were shootings, roadblocks, attacks, and bombings. The Arabs were fighting to keep Israel from being born, and the Jews were fighting back.”

Adler, however, is not totally removed from his subject. He obviously sees Meir as a hero, as a fighter for justice and freedom. He explains in a brief “About the Book” section that he grew up during Meir’s rising career in the Israeli government. Although she held important offices, he and his family always “referred to her affectionately as ’Golda,’ as if she were a close personal friend.”

It is interesting to note that although Our Golda is part of Viking’s Women of Our Time series, Adler does not make much of the fact that Meir was a woman in what is usually thought of as a man’s world. Just as he does not argue for the rightness of the Zionist cause, but simply assumes it, neither does he devote much ink to pointing out that it is unusual for a woman to be the elected leader of a modern nation engaged in war.

There are a few places where gender becomes an issue. Golda’s parents had clear assumptions about a daughter’s role. She could attend school, but working in the family store was more important than homework. By her mid-teens, she should be settled into marriage—and her parents went so far as to select a successful (and much older) husband for her. Although she married a Zionist and a scholar of her own choosing, Golda soon found that her physical and mental powers were greater than his. She also was more interested in political life than in family life. Her ambition and ability led her to positions of greater responsibility and prominence, while her husband faded into the background. The marriage ended, and Meir spent far less time with her children than she would have liked. In a biography of a successful man, these separations would hardly draw a comment, and Adler does not make issue of it here. His concern is with presenting a straightforward story of a strong leader, and he lets that story speak for itself.

David Adler has written several books about Jewish history and culture for children at all levels, including A Picture Book of Passover (1982) and A Picture Book of Hanukkah (1982), The Number on My Grandfather’s Arm (1987) for middle schoolers, and a well-known book of essays and photographs, We Remember the Holocaust (1987), for older students. He is also the author of the Cam Jensen series of young adult mystery novels, featuring another strong and intelligent female character.

As public education becomes more concerned with celebrating the rich diversity of the world’s people, Our Golda is an important book, both for its portrayal of a strong female leader and for its presentation of an essential piece of Jewish history. When the book was new, it received an Outstanding Social Studies Book for Children citation from the Children’s Book Council and was named a Carter G. Woodson Award Honor Book by the National Council for Social Studies. Teachers and school librarians still select Our Golda for its soundness, its evenhanded treatment of difficult political issues, and its lively writing.

Sources for Further Study

McElmeel, Sharron L. One Hundred Most Popular Children’s Authors: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies. Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1999.

Soffer, Isabel. Review of Our Golda: The Story of Golda Meir, by David A. Adler. School Library Journal 30, no. 8 (May, 1984): 75.

Sullivan, Edward T. The Holocaust in Literature for Youth: A Guide and Resource Book. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 1999.

Tyson, Cynthia A., and KaaVonia Hinton-Johnson. “Once upon a Time: Teaching About Women and Social Justice Through Literature.” Social Education 67, no. 1 (January/February, 2003): 54.