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Early life

Golda Mabovitch was born into a Ukrainian-Jewish family in downtown Kiev in what was then the Russian Empire on May 3, 1898. She was the daughter of Blume Neiditch (died 1951) and Moshe Yitzhak Mabovitch (died 1944), a carpenter. Meir wrote in her autobiography that her earliest memories were of her father boarding up the front door in response to rumours of an imminent pogrom. She was named after her great-grandmother, Golde, mother of her maternal grandfather. She had two sisters, Sheyna (born 1889) and Tzipke (later known as Clara; born 1902), as well as five other siblings who died in childhood.

Meir's father, Moshe, left the country to find work in New York City in 1903. In his absence, the rest of the family moved to the city of Pinsk (within present-day Belarus) to join her mother's family. In 1905, Moshe moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in search of higher-paying work, and found employment in the workshops of the local railroad yard. The following year, he had saved up enough money to bring his family to the United States. Golda along with her mother and sisters landed in Quebec and traveled to Milwaukee by train.

Meir's mother ran a grocery store on Milwaukee's north side. By age eight, Meir was often put in charge of watching the store when her mother went to buy supplies. She attended the Fourth Street Grade School (now Golda Meir School) from 1906 to 1912. A leader early on, she and a close friend, Regina Hamburger, organized the American Young Sisters Society, a fundraiser to pay for her classmates' textbooks in 1908. As part of the organization's activities, she rented a hall and scheduled a public meeting for the event. Despite frequent tardiness due to having to work in her mother's store, she graduated as valedictorian of her class.

In 1912, she began studying at North Division High School and worked part-time. Her employers included Schuster's department store and the Milwaukee Public Library. Her mother wanted Golda to leave school and marry, but she declined.

On 17 February 1913, Meir took a train to live with her married sister, Sheyna Korngold, in Denver, Colorado. There, Meir attended North High School. The Korngolds held intellectual evenings at their home, where Meir was exposed to debates on Zionism, literature, women's suffrage, trade unionism, and more. In her autobiography, she wrote: "To the extent that my own future convictions were shaped and given form... those talk-filled nights in Denver played a considerable role."

Around 1913, she began dating her future husband Morris Meyerson, a sign painter and socialist.