Golda Meir died on December 8, 1978 in Jerusalem from cancer. She was the first female Prime Minister of Israel and the third female Prime Minister in the world.
Golda Meir was born Golda Mabowitz in Kiev, part of the Russian Empire (now Ukraine), to Blum Naidtich and Moshe Mabowitz. Golda and her family lived in the so-called "Line of Settlement" in the western part of the Russian Empire, created by the anti-Semitic laws of the late 19th century with the aim of concentrating the country's Jewish population there.
In 1903, her father left for the United States, and three years later the entire family emigrated to him. They settled in Milwaukee, where her father worked as a carpenter and her mother ran a grocery store.
In 1915, Golda graduated from high school. At that time, she became actively involved in the Zionist youth movement. She then graduated from the State Normal School in Milwaukee (now the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), after which she worked as a teacher. In 1917, she married Maurice Myerson and changed her name to Golda Myerson.
Four years later, Golda Myerson, her husband, and her sister Sheina went to Palestine to help establish a Jewish state.
Golda Myerson was among the twenty-four people who signed the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. The very next day, the country was invaded by the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, and Iraq. Then Golda Meyerson was issued the first Israeli passport, with which she went to the United States to raise funds for the newly formed state. After her return, she was appointed the first Israeli ambassador to the Soviet Union, where she was greeted triumphantly by the Jewish community in Moscow.
A little later, in 1949, Golda Meyerson returned to Israel, being elected to the Knesset from the Mapai party and remaining a member of the Knesset until 1974, and also serving as Israel's Minister of Labor. In 1956, she became Foreign Minister in David Ben-Gurion's cabinet. Her predecessor, Moshe Sharett, had ordered all employees of the ministry to adopt Jewish surnames. Upon assuming the ministerial post, at Ben-Gurion's insistence, Golda Meyerson changed her name to Golda Meir (Meir means "giver of light" in Hebrew). In the early 1960s, Meir contracted lymphoma, but kept her illness a secret. In 1965, she resigned from the government and limited her political activity.
After the sudden death of Levi Eshkol (Skolnik) on February 26, 1969, Mapai chose Golda Meir as his successor as party leader and prime minister. This was shortly after Israel had won a decisive victory over the Arabs and captured significant territory in the Six-Day War.
The Yom Kippur War of 1973 also took place during Golda Meir's presidency. Despite conflicting intelligence reports of an impending attack on Israel and the proposals of Gen. David Elazar for a preemptive strike against Syria, Golda Meir decided to wait and thus gain greater international support for Israel in the ensuing war.
After the end of the war, Golda Meir's government was destabilized by contradictions within the ruling coalition and by accusations of poor preparation and mistakes in the conduct of the war. On April 11, 1974, Golda Meir resigned and on June 3, the post was taken by Yitzhak Rabin.