Paula Ben-Gurion (née Munweis) (; 8 April 1892
Biography
Paula Munweis was born in
Minsk, then part of the
Russian Empire, the daughter of Samuel Munweis and Bertha Bloch. She immigrated to New York as a teenager where the 1910 United States census gave her date of birth as 1890. She was trained as a nurse at Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey and worked in a New York
gynaecological clinic.
[Tom Segev (2018 - 2019 translation Haim Watzman) A State at Any Cost. The Life of David Ben-Gurion. Apollo. . p.137][.]
David Ben-Gurion met her at the home of her employer and
Poale Zion supporter Dr Samuel Ellsberg in summer of 1915. They spoke
Yiddish together.
[Shabtai Teveth (1987) Ben-Gurion. The Burning Ground. 1886–1948. Houghton Mifflin. . p. 119][Segev p.137] They married in 1917 at New York City's town hall. The following year Ben-Gurion enlisted as a soldier in the new British-raised
Jewish Legion. He left Paula three months pregnant. They did not meet again until she arrived, with their one-year-old daughter Geula, in
Jaffa 18 months later.
[Shabtai Teveth (1987) Ben-Gurion. The Burning Ground. 1886–1948. Houghton Mifflin. . pp. 125, 146] Paula was originally against the idea of going to Israel, as her anarchist politics pitted her against both Zionism and state building. Recalling this period Ben-Gurion said that she was not a Zionist, she had very little Jewish feeling, she was an American, she was an
Anarchism who admired
Emma Goldman. She had no interest in Israel. "America is better, why do we need the land of Israel?"
They had three children, Geula, Amos and Renana. Throughout their marriage she had to endure Ben-Gurion's long absences abroad and recurring suspicions, sometimes justified, about his relationships with other women.
[Tom Segev (2018–2019 translation Haim Watzman) A State at Any Cost. The Life of David Ben-Gurion. Apollo. . pp. 237, 240, 218–19, 487]
She was known for her acerbic tongue. She was fluent in
Yiddish language,
English language, and eventually
Hebrew language. A feisty woman, she had no qualms about asking her husband to wash the dishes. She was bemused by her husband's interest in
yoga and when his tutor, the famous Moshé Feldenkrais would show up she would say: "Here comes Mr. Hocus Pocus."
Paula is buried with her husband at the Ben-Gurion Tomb National Park in Midreshet Ben-Gurion in Israel's Negev desert.
In 1958, David Ben-Gurion published his letters to her: Letters to Paula and the Children.
Legacy and commemoration
A number of schools and institutions in Israel are named for her.
Leslie Moonves, former president and CEO of
CBS, is her grand-nephew.
See also
-
Women of Israel
-
Anarchism in the United States
External links
Further reading
-
Helmreich, William B. (1998). The Enduring Community: The Jews of Newark and Metrowest. Transaction Publishers.
