To Golda, for Mother’s Day

by Esther Cameron (May 2026)

–—on reading My Life

Golda, please…
It isn’t clear from your book
Whether you believed in G-d.
But it is clear
That you believed in Israel.
Your first memory
Was of hiding from a pogrom.
You had no pleasant childhood memories.
But from your youth you believed in a future.
You worked for Israel.
You fell in love and married
A man more cultivated, less dedicated,
Struggled to balance your love and your dedication,
To bear the hardships of your children.
You stayed on the kibbutz as long as you could,
Laboring in the fields, living on short rations.
You believed in socialism,
Not the people-trampling march of Bolshevism,
Your work was always based on friendship.
You believed in a society of sharers,
You organized labor movements and health care.
You made trips back to the States to raise money
For the War of Independence,
Then for the building of the state.
Later you traveled to meet with statesmen
To plead Israel’s cause, to beg for arms,
To negotiate in hopes of peace,
Always walking a tightrope
Over an abyss of hostility
But never silent in the face of calumny.
Your hopes for peace with the Arabs died hard
And even then waited hopefully for resurrection.
You glossed over your movement’s treatment of those to the right –
Didn’t mention, for instance, the “season” or the Altalena –
You thought the returnees to Hebron were crazy
But on the other hand it occurred to you
That Jews should really not be forbidden
To live anywhere on earth.
You did not agree with
“the ultra-pious doves.”
You accepted power fearfully
As the command of the movement,
Of statesmen with whom you were friends.
As prime minister, already an old woman, you worked round the clock.
You could not refuse to see people who needed to speak to you.
Your decisions at the time of the Yom Kippur war
Caused you agonies, before and after.
When not in office you lived
In a semi-detached house in Tel Aviv.
–
Indefatigable builder, friend, mother,
Stand us now and ever in good stead.
–
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