Paula Ben-Gurion

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Template:Short description Template:Use American English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox officeholder Paula Ben-Gurion (Template:Nee; 1892–1968) was an Israeli public figure and the spouse of the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion. Born in the Russian Empire, she migrated to the United States at a young age. There she trained as a surgical nurse, worked in Jewish hospitals in New Jersey and New York, and became an anarchist. She married the Poale Zion activist David Ben-Gurion, despite their disagreements on Zionism, and followed him to settle in Palestine. She dedicated her life to caring for her husband and raising their three children. During the 1930s, she attended the World Zionist Congress in Switzerland. Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence, she managed their household in Tel Aviv before moving to the Sde Boker kibbutz in the Negev Desert. She and her husband were buried alongside each other near the kibbutz.

Early life

Pauline Munweis was born in the Belarusian city of Minsk, in the Russian Empire,Template:Sfnm in 1892.Template:Sfnm She migrated to the United States in 1904, fleeing a wave of antisemitic pogroms in Belarus.Template:Sfn She settled in New York City and learned the English language.Template:Sfnm She trained as a nurse,Template:Sfnm at the Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey.Template:Sfnm She later went to work at a hospital on the East Side of Manhattan,Template:Sfn specialising in surgical nursing.Template:Sfn

Munweis mostly associated with other first-generation Jewish immigrants.Template:Sfn She was known to be friendly,Template:Sfn although she also had a reputation for being outspoken and blunt in any conversation.Template:Sfnm She was an anarchist and an anti-Zionist, and was deeply inspired by the Jewish anarchist Emma Goldman.Template:Sfnm She felt at home in the United States and considered herself American; she did not understand the Zionists' desire to move to Palestine.Template:Sfn She would remain opposed to Zionism throughout her entire life,Template:Sfn preferring to dedicate herself to other causes.Template:Sfn

Munweis lived and worked in the house of a Jewish doctor, who had opened his home to activists of the Labor Zionist political party Poale Zion.Template:Sfn There she met the activist David Ben-Gurion,Template:Sfnm who had moved to the United States following the outbreak of World War I.Template:Sfn Ben-Gurion had difficulty with personal relationships, but was attracted both by Munweis' warmth and unreserved style.Template:Sfnm In the summer of 1916, she volunteered to help Ben-Gurion write his book, The Land of Israel Past and Present, by copying passages from books at the New York Public Library.Template:Sfn They began a romantic relationship while working together and soon grew to love each other.Template:Sfn Munweis said of Ben-Gurion that, "as soon as he opened his mouth–I felt he was a great man".Template:Sfn

Marriage to Ben-Gurion

Paula Munweis and David Ben-Gurion in 1918

On 5 December 1917, Munweis and Ben-Gurion married each other in a civil ceremony at the New York City Hall; this surprised Ben-Gurion's fellow activists, who did not even know he and Munweis were in a relationship.Template:Sfnm They refused to seek sanctification for their marriage from a rabbi, despite repeated pleas by religious officials throughout their life together.Template:Sfn Understanding that they did not share each others' views on Zionism, Ben-Gurion had warned her that, if they married, she would have to move with him to Palestine, which at the time was a poor country without modern public utilities. He also told her that he planned to enlist in the nascent Jewish Legion and fight in the Palestine campaign against the Ottoman Empire.Template:Sfnm She decided to marry him anyway, hoping she would be able to dissuade him from going to Palestine and signing up to the Legion.Template:Sfn Munweis took her husband's surname, Ben-Gurion.Template:Sfn She also began using Paula as her first name,Template:Sfnm going by what her husband called her.Template:Sfnm Before long, she had given up her career as a nurse to commit to married life.Template:Sfn She left the Beth Israel hospital, two months before she was due to graduate with her diploma, despite pleas from her friends.Template:Sfn According to Israeli historian Anita Shapira, "she made him her life's work".Template:Sfn Shapira wrote that Paula was not an intellectual or emotional partner for Ben-Gurion, and instead dedicated herself to caring for him.Template:Sfn She introduced him to personal hygiene practices such as regularly bathing, brushing his teeth and even changing his underwear, which he had previously been unaccustomed to.Template:Sfn

In April 1918, after only five months of marriage, Ben-Gurion informed Paula that he had enlisted in the Legion and was about to be deployed to Palestine. Paula, having just found out that she was pregnant, broke down in tears; she would have to give birth and raise their child alone. She tried to convince him not to leave, but he responded that she did not know him well enough if she thought she could; his dedication to Zionism was stronger than his love for her.Template:Sfn Left alone while waiting for their first child, she became severely depressed.Template:Sfn In his letters to her from the front, he took responsibility for having left her and reaffirmed his love for her, but continued to justify his actions, believing that his Zionist ideals would eventually bring them "divine happiness" and "uninhibited love".Template:Sfn He wrote to her that, if he had not enlisted, then he believed he would have been "unworthy of you bearing my child".Template:Sfnm On 11 September 1918, Paula gave birth to their daughter;Template:Sfn following her husband's wishes, she named her Template:Ill (the Hebrew word for "Redemption").Template:Sfnm She wrote that their baby was pretty, despite resembling her father.Template:Sfn

A year after the war ended, Paula finally reunited with her husband in Palestine.Template:Sfnm She had agreed to emigrate purely out of obligation to her husband.Template:Sfn She insisted on travelling first class, and after a six-week journey, she and her daughter arrived in November 1919.Template:Sfn The family then travelled to London, where Paula gave birth to a son;Template:Sfn they named him Template:Ill, after the Jewish prophet.Template:Sfn They then moved to the Polish city of Płońsk, where they stayed with Ben-Gurion's family for over a year while Ben-Gurion himself travelled around for conferences. Paula had a tense relationship with her in-laws, frequently criticizing their poor hygiene. She also struggled with the poor standard of living in the city, having to boil the contaminated municipal water. In 1925, she gave birth to their third child, another daughter, who they named Template:Ill.Template:Sfn Paula refused to bear him a fourth child, despite his desire for another.Template:Sfn By then, their relationship had deteriorated; Ben-Gurion spent much of his time away from home and communicated with Paula in an increasingly formal manner, expressing less affection towards her.Template:Sfn Many of his letters to her were not intended to be kept private, and some were specifically intended for people other than her to read.Template:Sfnm According to British historian Elizabeth Monroe, "Paula [was] a mere shadow" in Ben-Gurion's correspondence during this period.Template:Sfn

Paula Ben-Gurion and family, 1929

In the early 1930s, the family moved into a newly-built house in Tel Aviv. They all stayed in a single room, while Paula rented the other rooms out to families on holiday in the city.Template:Sfn In May 1935, Paula discovered that, over the previous four years, her husband had been having an affair with Rega Klapholz during his trips to Europe; she forced him to end the relationship after Klapholz arrived in Palestine.Template:Sfn In August 1935, Paula was delegated to the Nineteenth Zionist Congress in Lucerne; she set sail along with Rachel Yanait Ben-Zvi, Dov Hoz, Abba Hushi, Berl Katznelson, Golda Meir and David Remez, with whom she spearheaded an initiative to establish a shipping company under the Jewish Agency.Template:Sfn Following the congress, Paula and her husband settled in rural Switzerland. Her husband attempted to reconcile with her, but she did not enjoy the location as much as him and did not join him on his walks through the mountains.Template:Sfn In August 1937, Paula attended the Twentieth Zionist Congress in Basel, where she clashed with Chaim Weizmann over his disrespect towards her husband.Template:Sfn By the late 1930s, Paula shared her husband's interests in their correspondence with each other.Template:Sfn

Following the outbreak of World War II and the Battle of France in 1940, Paula's husband wrote to her of his hope in the governments of Britain and the United States to win the war against Nazi Germany.Template:Sfn He frequently praised British prime minister Winston Churchill in his letters to her during this period.Template:Sfn During the war, Paula's son Amos was wounded while serving in the Jewish Brigade and was hospitalized in Liverpool, where he fell in love with a Manx nurse.Template:Sfn Paula objected to her son marrying a gentile and attempted to pressure him not to go through with it, but the wedding went ahead despite her protests in 1946.Template:Sfnm Paula was incensed when her husband welcomed their new daughter-in-law into the family and helped her emigrate to Palestine.Template:Sfn

Spouse of the prime minister

On 14 May 1948, Paula witnessed her husband declaiming the Declaration of Israeli Independence at the Tel Aviv Museum, which resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel.Template:Sfn David Ben-Gurion became the first prime minister of Israel, with Paula serving as the spouse of the prime minister from 1948 to 1953.Template:Sfn From this point onward, she and her husband spent most of their time together.Template:Sfn In an interview with Template:Ill, published in Yedioth Ahronoth, Paula spoke at length about her husband's personal and political life, giving anecdotes of his daily routine and habits, as well as the lead-up to the Declaration of Independence.Template:Sfn During her first term as spouse of the prime minister, her outfits were designed by her friend Lola Beer Ebner, who also designed outfits for First Lady Vera Weizmann and other women in Israeli high society.Template:Sfn Paula's presence at fashion shows, at a time of economic crisis when basic necessities were being rationed, drew criticism from journalists and the wider public.Template:Sfn

She continued taking care of her husband by ensuring he ate, slept and dressed well.Template:Sfn She frequently turned away people visiting her husband,Template:Sfnm including people she thought might exhaust himTemplate:Sfn and those who she did not like.Template:Sfn In biographies about her husband, Paula has frequently been depicted as an "angry gatekeeper" who "bark[ed]" at visitors, and contrasted with descriptions of her husband's warmth.Template:Sfn She often interrupted meetings to bring her husband a drink.Template:Sfn When Isaiah Berlin met the Ben-Gurions in Tel Aviv in 1950, he recalled Paula rejecting her husband's offer to serve their guest a coffee or an orange juice, saying "water would be much easier"; Berlin accepted the water.Template:Sfn She would openly confront her husband whenever she thought he was wrong about something.Template:Sfn At a speech her husband gave at Lod Airport, when he complained that many young Jews did not go on aliyah and only donated their money, Paula interjected "that's important too, isn't it?"Template:Sfn

On 7 December 1953, Ben-Gurion resigned as prime minister, and the following week, he and Paula moved to Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev desert.Template:Sfnm He had not considered her wishes when he made the decision for them to settle in the desert.Template:Sfn She was forced to leave behind a full life in Tel Aviv, and was not happy with the move to a kibbutz in the desert, where she would live an ascetic lifestyle alongside people who were much younger than herself. She nevertheless oversaw the design of their new cottage, which would have a large study and separate bedrooms, and enforced strict standards of hygeine in her home as well as in the collective kitchen. She did not like the taste of the food served by the kibbutz kitchen and insisted that her husband eat her own "kutch-mutch" – a bland but healthy meal – twice a day.Template:Sfn

In 1955, Ben-Gurion returned to his post as prime minister.Template:Sfn He moved to Jerusalem, where he held a Bible studies class every Saturday afternoon; Paula found the classes "terribly bor[ing]" and thought her husband only held them out of obligation to learn about Jewish history.Template:Sfn During the Suez Crisis of 1956, when her husband was sick, she almost refused entry to Yaakov Herzog, but was convinced that the matter was urgent and allowed him into their room. From then on, Herzog was one of only a few people who Paula would allow to visit her husband; he would tap on her bedroom window whenever he needed her to let him in.Template:Sfn In 1963, she and her husband attended the funeral of Shlomo Lavi, the founder of the kibbutz movement.Template:Sfn That same year, her husband resigned again as prime minister and retired to Sde Boker.Template:Sfnm At meetings of the Sde Boker bible study group, Paula would usually be the one to call an end to each session, in order to ensure her husband got enough rest.Template:Sfn Whenever she left the kibbutz to visit Tel Aviv, her husband sent her frequent telegrams telling her he missed her and asking for her to come back.Template:Sfn During this time, Paula became an admirer of the right-wing politician Menachem Begin, and over the course of the 1960s, she was happy to see her husband's personal relationship with Begin improve.Template:Sfn Paula was one of only a few women whose image appeared on the frontpage of Israeli newspapers during the Six-Day War.Template:Sfn

Death and legacy

Gravestones of Paula (left) and David Ben-Gurion (right) in the Ben-Gurion Tomb National Park

Paula Ben-Gurion died in the Beer Sheba Hospital on 29 January 1968,Template:Sfn at 76 years old.Template:Sfn At her deathbed, her husband read the verse "thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown".Template:Sfn He subsequently retired from politics and public life.Template:Sfn David Ben-Gurion had never discussed with Paula where she would have liked her body to be buried. He decided that her body would be buried on a cliff next to the Midreshet Sde Boker, in a small plot surrounded by trees, which he had intended for his own body.Template:Sfn She received a modest funeral at Sde Boker, eschewing any state protocol. It was attended by family and members of the Israeli government, and conducted by the chief military rabbi Shlomo Goren. She was given a eulogy by Devora Netzer, who emphasized Paula's role as the prime minister's "helpmate", saying: "in every situation you were able to create a warm home – for kings, for barons, and for worker".Template:Sfn The site of her burial was renovated extensively, building a ceremonial plaza over her own grave and moving her gravestone away from her actual resting place.Template:Sfn

Paula's husband was left feeling lonely after her death and fell into a deep depression. He lived alone in their house and continued eating her "kutch-mutch" to honour her memory. He also spoke very little to other people in the kibbutz, keeping mostly to his small circle of bodyguards and his secretary.Template:Sfn He wrote that, after Paula's death, his only remaining close friends were Shlomo Zemach and Rachel Beit-Halakhmi.Template:Sfn David Ben-Gurion died on 3 December 1973,Template:Sfnm in Paula's former bedroom in their home in Tel Aviv.Template:Sfn His body was buried alongside Paula's.Template:Sfnm Per a request in his will, no eulogies were given to him at the couple's gravesite.Template:Sfnm In contrast to Paula's funeral, a modest event where mourning and emotions had been freely expressed, his own funeral was carried out as an unemotional state affair.Template:Sfnm Their burial place has since become a secular pilgramage site.Template:Sfn

The Ben-Gurion home in Tel Aviv was turned into a museum, in which David Ben-Gurion was centred as the protagonist of the exhibition, while Paula was relegated to a secondary role.Template:Sfn Her own bedroom was covered in photographs of her husband.Template:Sfn Architect Arieh Sharon designed a dining hall for a kibbutz in the Negev desert, which he named after Paula, but it was never constructed.Template:Sfn A school in Jerusalem, named after Paula Ben-Gurion, was established to provide education to both secular and orthodox Jewish students; its attempt at integration quickly collapsed, with orthodox parents insisting their children be segregated from the secular students.Template:Sfn On the 50th anniversary of Paula's death, in January 2018, a conference was held at the Ben-Gurion museum to commemorate her; all the presentations were given by men, and they were followed by a general discussion about the spouses of famous men.Template:Sfn During the April 2019 Israeli legislative election, Sara Netanyahu complained that the Israeli press "gave more credit to Paula Ben Gurion than to her".Template:Sfn

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