Boston University Law School Professor Emerita Pnina Lahav, a member of the Elie Weisel Center for Judaic Studies at BU, came to Northeastern on December 5 2022 to discuss her new book The Only Woman in the Room: Golda Meir and Her Path to Power. In conversation with Professor Simon Rabinovitch, Lahav revealed the complexities and contradictions of this singular woman. We heard about how she balanced the demands of her position with the need to maintain a non-threatening feminine image; how she was ever-conscious of the inferiority of her education despite her intellectual gifts; how the public expectations of her differed between Israel and the US, which she visited frequently as an emissary of Israel, and how her public image was tailored accordingly; how she was not very present as a mother to her own children, but convinced them it was for the greater good; how she was a role model to a generation of Israeli women, but didn’t always provide individual support; how her early life subject to the extremes of anti-semitism informed her hard-line security pronouncements when she was Prime Minister; how she always put the needs of the State before her own.
The audience included not only faculty, students and guests from Northeastern, but also Brandeis and Boston University colleagues.
