Historic 1926 Golda Meir letter to be auctioned
Starting bid of £4,800 for literary treasure written by the first woman to serve as Israel's prime minister
A typed two-page letter signed by Golda Meir, dated May 16, 1928, is set to be auctioned in Los Angeles on January 30.
Penned shortly after Meir’s move to then-Palestine as a young Zionist leader, the correspondence, addressed to the “Hachlutz” Histadrut (a Jewish labour movement), offers a glimpse into the early Zionist endeavours and the struggles of the Jewish labour movements.
Written in Tel Aviv, Meir discusses the halt in immigration and its impact on the agricultural settlements, the efforts of the Female Workers Council and the need for continued immigration and establishment of new settlements.
It is signed by Meir, ”Golda Myerson”, the name she used in her youth, and countersigned by her colleague Elisheva Kaplan, wife of future Prime Minister Levi Eshkol.
Also going under the hammer is a National Medal of Science awarded to Kindertransport survivor Walter Kohn in 1988 by President Ronald Reagan. Kohn, who died in 2016, also won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the medal sold for £368k in January 2022.
Kohn was born in 1923 in Vienna. After being transported to Canada, he enrolled in the University of Toronto and studied applied mathematics. He earned a PhD from Harvard in Physics. Kohn was a research professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara and was the founding director of the campus’s Institute for Theoretical Physics, now KITP. He also taught at the University of California San Diego from 1960-1979.
For further information, contact auctioneers Nate Sanders.
Thank you for helping to make Jewish News the leading source of news and opinion for the UK Jewish community. Today we're asking for your invaluable help to continue putting our community first in everything we do.
For as little as £5 a month you can help sustain the vital work we do in celebrating and standing up for Jewish life in Britain.
Jewish News holds our community together and keeps us connected. Like a synagogue, it’s where people turn to feel part of something bigger. It also proudly shows the rest of Britain the vibrancy and rich culture of modern Jewish life.
You can make a quick and easy one-off or monthly contribution of £5, £10, £20 or any other sum you’re comfortable with.
100% of your donation will help us continue celebrating our community, in all its dynamic diversity...
Engaging
Being a community platform means so much more than producing a newspaper and website. One of our proudest roles is media partnering with our invaluable charities to amplify the outstanding work they do to help us all.
Celebrating
There’s no shortage of oys in the world but Jewish News takes every opportunity to celebrate the joys too, through projects like Night of Heroes, 40 Under 40 and other compelling countdowns that make the community kvell with pride.
Pioneering
In the first collaboration between media outlets from different faiths, Jewish News worked with British Muslim TV and Church Times to produce a list of young activists leading the way on interfaith understanding.
Campaigning
Royal Mail issued a stamp honouring Holocaust hero Sir Nicholas Winton after a Jewish News campaign attracted more than 100,000 backers. Jewish Newsalso produces special editions of the paper highlighting pressing issues including mental health and Holocaust remembrance.
Easy access
In an age when news is readily accessible, Jewish News provides high-quality content free online and offline, removing any financial barriers to connecting people.
Voice of our community to wider society
The Jewish News team regularly appears on TV, radio and on the pages of the national press to comment on stories about the Jewish community. Easy access to the paper on the streets of London also means Jewish News provides an invaluable window into the community for the country at large.
We hope you agree all this is worth preserving.
