History: Golda Meir, North Denver teen to Israeli prime minister

Neighborhoods are full of people, living their lives and making their small contributions to the world. Some reach further, becoming neighborhood, city or state leaders. Still others have national reputations. Only a few turn up on the international stage.

One of those was Golda Meir, the first woman prime minister of the new nation of Israel. This month I will share her story and her connection with our neighborhood.

Goldie (Golda) Mabovitch was born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1898 to Moshe and Bluma Mabovitch. She had two surviving sisters, Sheyna (Shayna), the older, and younger sister, Zipke. Shayna married Sam Korngold and later moved to Denver.

Moshe emigrated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1903, and his family followed in 1906. Golda attended school in Milwaukee until her father insisted that she marry rather than attend a teachers college. She fled to Denver to stay with Shayna and Sam and their daughter, Judith, in their duplex at 1606/1608 Julian St.

The Korngolds lived in the heart of the West Colfax Eastern-Jewish immigrant district. It was the nearby Jewish Consumptive Relief Society that drew Jewish immigrants who suffered from tuberculosis to Denver and to the neighborhood. Sam owned Korngold’s Cleaning and Pressing Works located near the Brown Palace Hotel.

Shayna and Sam were part of a large group of Labor Zionists, socialists and other intellectuals who welcomed Golda to their evening discussions. In between these sessions, Golda attended North Denver High School and worked part-time at Sam’s business. At the meetings, she met Morris Meyerson, who eventually became her husband. They married in December 1917.

In 1916, Golda returned to Milwaukee, where she finished high school, went to a teachers college, taught reading to children at a folkshul and spoke on Labor Zionism to informal groups.

But increasingly, she was watching political changes in Palestine, and when the British agreed to the existence of a Jewish homeland there, she decided she wanted to move to Palestine to live in a kibbutz.

Four years after she and Morris married, they moved to Israel. The couple had a daughter, Sarah, and a son, Menachem. Morris was not interested in politics, so eventually the couple parted. She changed her name from Meyerson to Meir.

Over the decades, Golda became involved in politics, rising up the ranks of local, state and finally national government. She served as a member of the government of the Jewish Agency, which ran fledgling Israel before it became a formal nation in 1948.

After that Golda served as foreign minister, meeting with foreign leaders as Israel worked to be recognized by the world. She joined the Knesset, which was the Israeli parliament. In 1969, just as she was planning to retire, the prime minister died and she was asked to fill the position. She continued in that post through the Yom Kippur War and finally retired in 1974.

Before her death from cancer in 1978, she continued to act as a diplomat for Israel. She became one of the most beloved women diplomats in the world.                    
In the 1980s, the little duplex on Julian Street was empty, had suffered from a fire, a tornado and vandalism, and the city had tagged it for demolition.

Jean May, a local activist, discovered the house’s legacy and spoke to Northside resident state Sen. Dennis Gallagher about what it would take to save it. Gallagher enlisted Norman Provizer, a political science professor at Metro State College, to help.

Provizer had broader connections in the Jewish community, and they all began a years-long battle to save the house. In 1988, the Auraria Foundation secured a site on the Auraria campus, and 1606/1608 Julian came to its final resting place after two temporary stops. Fully restored as a museum and as the Golda Meir Center for Political Leadership, it is the only U.S. home of Golda Meir still in existence.

Golda Meir saw her time in Denver as pivotal to who she became. She once said “to the extent that my own future convictions were shaped and given form, and ideas were discarded or accepted by me while I was growing up, those talk-filled nights in Denver played a considerable role.” She added, “Denver was a turning point because my real education began. In Denver, life really opened up for me.”

Dr. Rebecca A. Hunt has been a resident of North Denver since 1993. She worked in museums and then taught museum studies and Colorado, Denver, women’s and immigration history at the University of Colorado Denver until she retired in 2020.

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