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the dozen factions in the Zionist movement, she was quickly drawn to the Labor Zionism of Aharon David Gordon, which had all the necessary elements of romance, social justice, and Jewish pride.
    A farm manager and intellectual, Gordon had left Russia for Palestine in 1903 and taken up a hoe, determined to till the soil himself. Working the land, he believed, would cleanse Jews of centuries of enforced para- sitism.

    The Land of Israel is acquired through labor, not through fire and not through blood. . . . We must create a new people, a human people whose attitude toward other peoples is informed with the sense of hu- man brotherhood. . . . All the forces of our history, all the pain that has accumulated in our national soul, seem to impel us in that direction. . . . We are engaged in a creative endeavor the like of which is itself not to be found in the whole history of mankind: the rebirth and rehabilitation of a people that has been uprooted and scattered to the winds.

    Inflamed by Gordon’s concept, Golda devoured every issue of magazines like The Young Maccabean and New Judea for tales of the pioneers who’d return to Palestine. When she could carve out free time, she shook the
    blue-and-white collection box of the Jewish National Fund to raise money to buy them land.
    Gradually, she built a life for herself among Sheyna’s gang, spending weekends with them at picnics, concerts, and lectures, much to Sheyna’s chagrin. You need to get more sleep, Sheyna nagged her. You need to be careful that men don’t think that you’re loose. In Golda’s account of that time, Sheyna started “watching me like a hawk.” Shamai tried to reason with Sheyna that Golda was anything but flighty. But while Sheyna was sparing of words, she was never short of opinions. She looked at her younger sister, who was only sixteen years old, and reminded her that she was “blessed with a lot of good attributes, also faults worth watching.”
    Still craving Sheyna’s approval, Golda was both mortified and furious, the two emotions tugging her in opposite directions. Intoxicated by her first taste of independence, she rebelled. Neither sister could ever recall what the final spark was, but over dinner one night, Sheyna berated Golda one time too many and Golda exploded. “I’m not a baby,” she fumed, jaw clenched. “You have no right to boss me around as though I were. . . . I’m leaving.”
    Sheyna refused to back down. “Go ahead,” she snapped.
    Golda stormed out of the house. Ten minutes later, she realized she had nowhere to live, no way to support herself, no books, and no change of clothes. She couldn’t go home to Milwaukee; her father wouldn’t al- low her name to be spoken in the house. She was faced with an unam- biguous choice: Apologize to Sheyna or drop out of school. As an adult, Golda was notorious for refusing to compromise, for shrinking from owning up to her errors. Demonstrating that same propensity as a teen- ager, Golda left her books behind, rented an apartment, and struck out on her own.
    * * *
    It’s impossible to know how much attention Golda would have paid to Morris Meyerson if she hadn’t been “almost as lonely as independent,” slaving away at a degrading job and living in a tiny rented room. A Lithu-
    anian immigrant, Morris was the least garrulous of the crowd who hung out at Sheyna’s. Not quite twenty-one years old, with thinning hair and steel-rimmed glasses, he was a private, introspective man who worked sporadically as a sign painter and seemed more comfortable with Chek- hov and Mozart than with political badinage.
    But most of the men Golda had met at Sheyna’s avoided her, lest they incur her sister’s notorious wrath. So Golda couldn’t resist when Morris invited her to a free concert in the park. After the last note was played, they strolled hand in hand, Morris analyzing the symphony, Golda awed by his knowledge. “Oh, now I wish I could hear that music all over again,” she