Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the Jewish Museum. My name is nelly benedek and on the senior director of education. Its my pleasure to welcome you to two nights author talk with francine clarksburg under new book lioness golda meir and the nation of israel, a program where pro presented with the jewish week there were honored to host this talk because vaccine has been a long time Jewish Museum board member. For 30 years in fact, right . We appreciate her ongoing dedication to our institution and its programming. Please visit our website to signup for our news to learn about other lectures, concerts and workshops taking place this fall season. After the talk we invite you to stay for a reception where francine will be signing books in the corner. Now please join me in welcoming gary rosenblatt, editor and publisher of the jewish week who will introduce our speaker. [applause] will. Thank you very much. Good evening everyone. Before i forget i want to ask all of you to turn off your cell phones. And that goes for you too, golda. Doesnt look like shes ahead of her time. So as editor and publisher of the jewish week i am proud that the jewish week is copresenting this program, along with our friends at the Jewish Museum. And im so honored to be introducing the women of the hour, francine klagsbrun, who in addition to her other writings, is deeply admired and avidly read as a columnist for the jewish week, and did your friend. So on my way in this evening, i her to jump in talking about your new book. And one said its a great read, you cant beat it. And the other one said beat it . You cant lift it. [laughing] so the truth is i received an advance copy of the book and was a little intimidated by its size and half. Yes, it is 813 pages, but keep in mind that includes 73 pages of carefully annotated notes in the back, followed by 55 pages of bibliography and index. So the text is really about 695 pages. And fran, when i finish reading it i played to make a cm. Thats a celebration that scholars make to mark the completion after months or years of study of but seriously, as i read this book, i come away each time enlightened and full of admiration. Not only for the remarkable accomplishments of golda meir, this central figure in modern jewish history, but for the way francine has made her come to life in this monumental work. And it is now and forever the definitive biography of golda. And as francine told sandy barofsky whose excellent piece on the new book is featured in this weeks issue of the jewish week, francine felt like she began to inhabit golda during the eight years shes been working on this book. It is law and thoroughly researched, but it is not a dry read. Pick up any page and start reading and you will be drawn into the narrative, the story of the unique woman and emerging nation and an ancient people. Fortunately, i am familiar with her writing because shes been contributing a monthly column to the jewish week, almost from the time i came to the paper in 1993. And given our rates contributing is pretty accurate. But i can type that of all the columnists and reporters and others whose work i see in the office, shes the most reliable in meeting a deadline and producing a clean his copy. I wasnt at all surprised when i heard her editor say that the manuscript came in at Something Like 346,000 words, and she didnt have to change any of them. Now, thats the sign of either great writer or a really lazy editor. [laughing] and i know he is one of the best editors in the business. Whats so impressive to me about her output between books and her essays is that she is both a scholarly historian and a keen observer of contemporary trends, and thats a rare combination. Shes the author of more than a dozen books. Her other works include voices of wisdom, the fourth commandment, remember the sabbath day, and married people, staying together in the aged divorce. She was editor of the bestselling free to be you and me produced by marlo thomas. Shes contributed articles to many publications and in addition to our ba and ma degree, she holds a bachelor of hebrew literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary and was awarded an honorary doctorate. Francine is a trustee of the Jewish Museum, and on the board of directors of the jewish book council, and is a contributing editor to two jewish feminist publications. She was at the forefront of the struggle to have women ordained as rabbis in the conservative movement. And finally francine, i hope you know that you and your endlessly charming husband, sam, are so dear to my wife judy and me. So im honored to introduce you now. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the author of lioness golda meir and the nation of israel, francine klagsbrun. [applause] thank you, gary. I just love gary. Is one of the great editors of our time, and for me it is such an honor to be introduced by gary rosenblatt, and for the jewish week to be cosponsoring this. Gary has been my editor, my boss for all these years that ive been writing for the jewish week and its just been a joy every single moment of it. And were also very good friends. I also want to thank the jewish week i dont know where shes sitting, but want to thank her for this event for the jewish week and was involved in this bid and whenever it is its magic and what if she does is magic and i thank her for that. And then i want to thank particularly the people of the Jewish Museum who put this event together, nelly benedek who introduced gary, who was the person who invited me to speak your at the museum, and she has been so supportive, very patient with me when i got a little concerned about this or that. Jenna weiss who does public programming and who pulled this program together let me tell you where all quite overwhelmed by the number of people who are here, and jenna has managed to do it very graciously. And the director of key medication at the museum and runs the whole shebang in terms of Public Events and anything has to do with the public, and i thank you for your kindness and for your support also. Then i have to just do a quick shout out to Carolyn Hessel who is at the Guardian Angel of all writers but a a very good fried of mine. This project began because of caroline. It was her idea. She met with me every month for lunch. All these years i was writing it, she would say what you up to now . She read the manuscript at least twice and has been just so wonderfully supportive. And i want to thank my beloved editor who never said what are you up to now . Who just accepted that i was when i was and has been a joy to work with and her wisdom and knowledge has been wonderful for me. I also want to thank Naomi Firestone who is the current director of the jewish book council. Carolyn had been the director. Carolyn one naomi is here and she is still one of ideas and she keeps giving me ideas of things i should do with this book, and i thank you, naomi. So want to also thank all of you, so many of you for coming and im very touched and very grateful to all of you. Now were going to begin with the word from our guest of honor. So just hold on. The former Prime Minister of israel golda meir is totally visiting this country on behalf of the you ja on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the launching of israel bond. By the way this is her only Network Television interview and we welcome you to our country and tour program. Thank you very much. You must say zionism is equated with jews. And what they did at the u. N. Was to give a legal stamp to antisemitism. Call it by its right name. And thats series. The are antisemites in the world and now its been legalized and, of course, if you say that zionists are racists, that israel is a racist state, then almost necessary to destroy that state. I mean, it has given legal sanction one, for the semitism which affects every jew in the world, and two, for anything that in countries they want to do against israel. I chose that, this is from an interview in 1976 shortly after the u. N. Had passed zionism is racism resolution, which it did not resend, by the way, into making 91. But i want to show you that golda was person of her own time but she was also a person of our time. The issue of the u. N. In terms of israels attitude to you and is one of that is prejudiced, Unesco Research showed that. The word designed his own racism are still used together. The term racist is used for the state of asia. Golda would not have objected to criticism for israel, norwood high but those kinds of words which were said then we still used today. So she was in some ways very much a a part of our own times. But, of course, she was also very much part of her own time. Her story has been told before, in some books, film, and television, in play on broadway last year. But i felt that she was not given her dues, that we need to examine her and her times in more depth and more breath. Ice still think with the perspective of the time we shod take another look at golda meir. You know in our own day she was one of if not the most powerful women in the world. More powerful than many men. So i want to know how would we see her today . How should we see her . Who was this person . You look at her on the screen and i think many of you thats a memory of her, this little old lady, so sometimes grandmotherly looking. But the way she really . What i i found in all those yes of research is that she was a very complex person. She was a bundle of contradictions. For example, she was the ultimate insider in israeli politics. She rose through the ranks. She became labor minister, Prime Minister, Prime Minister, yet in many ways she was also an outsider. She was the woman in the world that was very much of a mans world at that time. Not only that, she was a woman who came from the United States to go to then british mandatory palestine. She was born of course in key have in russia but she spent her youth and the United States from the time she was ages old until she was 25. She was the only found of the state who had done that. She was on the founder who came from a country that was not persecuting its jews. She came from a country where your parents or grandparents like mine could really succeed, could grow, and she could have grown. Who knows, she could become or first woman president since we havent gotten there yet. [applause] so she wasnt outsider even though she seemed to be so much inside. And that was important, who she was and to she became. She was also a female, a women, an icon for women. In many ways she lived a very modern womans life. She was married. She separated from her husband. They never divorced but she split from them. In her early years of marriage she had an abortion. She had lovers. She also left her children for long times because you so busy working. She was a single mother. And yet she was opposed to the feminist movement of the 1970s that so many of us here were involved in. Thats not to say she didnt care about women. She cared very much about womens issues at all levels. For example, when the state was first being formed, every little decision had be discussed to the nth degree. One of the decisions that had to be made was how do you address members of the knesset, members of the parliament here in the United States we say the senator from new york, for example. But in israel they dont vote geographically. So how do you address them . Than men in the cabinet in their great wisdom said will, why dont we use a system that is used in senegal, particularly orthodox synagogues, where men are called to bless the torah you say, for example, isaac the son of jacob. So why do we identify the men by their fathers why do we identify members of the knesset by their fathers names . And golda said, i think we should identify them by their mothers name. Why dont we say isaac, the son of rachel . They put the whole thing aside. They didnt discuss it any further. But on a more serious level when she was a labor minister she pushed, literally pushed through legislation that protected women, that protected women working women when she was baby. That would be free, it was paid Maternity Leave which we still dont have now. So she cared about women if she cared about womens issues but she was very opposed to the Womens Movements in the 1970s 1970s, which is i sort of call that a little bit against her, she said those crazy bra burning women. Well, part of that was because golda was a socialist and she had this vision of socialism taking over all of society and everybody would be under that blanket of socialized, socialism and nobody we did have a special movement because everybody needs, everybody would feel the same. The other reason was simply her ambition. She knew that in her mans world identifying with the feminist movement was not going to get her what she wanted to go. You might know that even Women Leaders today dont call themselves feminists but they dont say those crazy bra burning women. But even so the interesting contradiction is that the Womens Movement adopted her as their icon. I remember going to the ms. Magazine, some of you remember this post always going to the ms. Magazine office because i was editing free to be you and me and a compilation of articles for ms. Magazine, and on the wall was this big poster with the lovely image of golda and the legend beneath it that said but can she type . [laughing] because that was what people thought women should be doing in those days. Another contradiction. She was poorly educated. She did have more than a high school degree. She went to Normal School for about a year and dropped out, and yet she could speak without notice. Even i have notes pick she could speak without notes right to the heart of her audience. Our colleagues said she could read from the phone book and make people cry, she was bad effective. And then another contradiction, she often had that kind of grandmotherly and which ive mentioned before, she played. She like to present herself that way at times. When she was interviewed by newspapers she would talk about her chicken soup recipe, you know, but when she mentions her chicken soup recipe one time thousands of people wrote in to get the recipe. So i put in my book because i thought everybody would want it. But i got to tell you the truth, its nothing much. [laughing] this grandmotherly type woman was tough as stupid she could also be sarcastic, cunning, even cruel to people who didnt agree with her or she didnt like or did things she was not happy about. Somebody i interviewed said to me, when he heard because she was not only so sarcastic and counting at she was so he said when he was told, he worked for her, when he was told that while she was on the telephone that there was phone call, it was golda meir, he said i stand up straight and salute. [laughing] because that was the kind of feeling she conveyed, along with the grandmotherly image. And then finally, the saddest contradiction is golda meir was and remains appeared in the United States and in countries around the world, in her own country, in israel she became a controversial figure. She became controversial for one thing, for sexist reason, from us optimistic reasons. Men would work for her when theyre young and didnt really like working for this powerful often difficult woman. After she died really let her have it. And things that she had been confident, well, that became arrogant. Words that we have heard often applied to women when men dont like them. Thats really all that part of the story. The other part, probably a larger part, is that she was a Prime Minister during the yom kippur wars 1973 1973 israel wt war, but they lost about 2600 soldiers, thousands more who were wounded. The country was left with a very a feeling they were now vulnerable and that feeling has remained. And golda meir, im going to come back to the subject, golda meir was the Prime Minister and she was held responsible for that. Now, her life story reads almost like fiction. She was born as a set in kiev in 1898. Her sister, her older sister was nine years older than she. Between her birth and the birth of shayna, her parents had four other babies, all of the boys, all of them died in infancy. She grew up in milwaukee. Her father went first and then she came with her mother and her sisters in 1962 milwaukee, wisconsin. That was something, i looked at it again and thought about it again. The fact that she grew up in milwaukee and did not grew up in the slums of new york or the tenements of new york had a great effect on her. In those days as you all know there were ways of jewish immigrants coming from eastern europe. The german jews had, had a dent the 1880s helped them and started philanthropies for them, but were embarrassed by the ellipse down, most of our parents and grandparents look down at them. They thought they were dirty, and that they were congregating in cities like new york and chicago, the big cities. The german jews, their organizations that they formed which whose purpose was to spread the jews out, these Eastern European jews so they would not be in one area only, and also they could become americanized. For the most part the system did not work. It did work with her father, and he settled in milwaukee. Because she lived in milwaukee it seems to me that she was a different kind of person than she mightve been had she gone in new york. To be sure the family was very poor. They lived in the ghetto of milwaukee. Nevertheless, the city was a socialist city. Golda had joined the zionist socialists, and that was reinforced by the atmosphere in her city. Milwaukee was closer to the frontier. She didnt grow up in a tenement. Was poor but there was a piece of green and is also that front you feeling, that can defeat them. You work hard enough, you really give it your all and you achieve what you want to achieve. I was absolutely goldas attitude. Then there was this optimism. Even america as as a whole was still going, sense of optimism, expanding westward. She always describe yourself as an optimist. A jew she would say cannot afford the luxury of not being an optimist because of our history. And then gold is sister went to live in denver and golda joined her for a while and she met a m