WORLDS APART BUT NOT THAT FAR REMOVED

As I watched "Golda," memories from when I first heard about the “Yom Kippur War” waging against Israel came flooding back. I was outside the North Avenue branch of the Jewish Educational Center (JEC) in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where our family has attended worship services since moving to the city in 1965.

On October 6, 1973, war erupted in the Middle East on the holiest day of the Jewish Year, just as Jews everywhere prepared to pray for peace and I was about to walk into our synagogue. Fifty years ago on Yom Kippur, the atmosphere was similar to the tense time following President Kennedy's assassination a decade prior.

When I told our daughter that we were planning to see the movie, Golda, she said that when her husband saw the billboards for the film in Los Angeles, he commented, “Your mom’s going to be excited about that one.” Indeed, my husband and I opted to see it the first chance we got when it opened earlier in September at the theater in our town. The September 1 piece in the New Jersey Jewish News, attached hereto, discusses the importance of the film.

Helen Mirren did not disappoint in the title role. During Golda’s tenure as Prime Minister of Israel in my younger years, she made television appearances, which I watched with my family. In the film, Mirren embodied Golda so much that I felt like I was watching the actual Golda in action. Watching Mirren play Golda and “mother” and maneuver Henry Kissinger, then U.S. Secretary of State, was captivating.

When my husband and I left the movie theater, I sent our three children a WhatsApp communication stating, “Noteworthy is that she was Grandma Yette’s second cousin-you aren’t that far removed!” Yette was their paternal great-grandmother. Until her passing in 1971, I had the privilege of meeting Grandma Yette a few times while my husband and I were dating.

It’s always fun to add that Grandma Yette’s sister-in-law Lena, her brother Arthur’s wife, babysat Golda when their families lived in the old country in the city of Pinsk, Russia (currently Belarus). Little did she know that someday in America, she would marry Golda’s relative.

Grandaunt Lena “stood in” as our grandmother and walked down the aisle at our wedding in 1975. At that time, we didn’t know about her history with Golda. Her granddaughters enlightened us many years later.

There was so much negative hype about all the cigarette smoking in the film, but that was how it was at the time, which didn’t seem unusual to me. I did tell my husband that a cousin whose mother died of the ill effects of smoking in 1977 at age 54 should probably not see the movie, but my cousin emailed me unexpectedly, saying, “I did see the Golda movie, did I tell you? Then came home and did some googling and reading.”

It’s a significant part of history. You, too, may want to see Golda.