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Soviet
Jews Welcome Golda Meir
In 1948,
the Soviet Union supported the creation of the State of Israel.
Later that year, Golda Meir (then known as Golda Myerson) arrived
in Moscow as Israel's first ambassador to the USSR. Because of
the government's pro-Israel stance, Soviet Jews felt comfortable
about expressing their interest in the new Jewish state. In the
following passage from her autobiography, Meir recalls the warm
reception she received during a visit to a synagogue.
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As
we had planned, we went to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah. .
. . The street in front of the synagogue had changed. Now
it was filled with people, packed together like sardines,
hundreds and hundreds of them, of all ages, including Red
Army officers, soldiers, teenagers, and babies carried in
their parents' arms. Instead of the 2,000-odd Jews who usually
came to the synagogue on the holidays, a crowd of close
to 50,000 people was waiting for us.
For a minute I couldn't grasp what had happened -- or even
who they were. And then it dawned on me. They had come --
those good, brave Jews -- in order to be with us, to demonstrate
their sense of kinship and to celebrate the establishment
of the State of Israel. Within seconds they had surrounded
me, almost lifting me bodily, almost crushing me, saying
my name over and over again. Eventually, they parted ranks
and let me enter the synagogue, but there, too, the demonstration
went on. Every now and then, in the women's gallery, someone
would come to me, touch my hand, stroke or even kiss my
dress.
Without speeches or parades, without any words at all really,
the Jews of Moscow were proving their profound desire --
and their need -- to participate in the miracle of the establishment
of the Jewish state, and I was the symbol of the state for
them.
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