Paula Ben-Gurion (Hebrew: פולה בן-גוריון, née Munweis; 1892 – 29 January 1968) was the spouse of the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion. Born in the Russian Empire, she migrated to the United States at a young age. There she trained as a surgical nurse and became an anarchist. She married Ben-Gurion, despite their disagreements on Zionism, and followed him to settle in Palestine. She dedicated her life to caring for her husband and raising their three children.

During the 1930s, she attended the World Zionist Congress in Switzerland. Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence, her husband became the country's first prime minister and Paula served as his spouse. She subsequently became a prominent public figure in Israeli society, communicating with the press and attending public events. She also cared for her husband and managed their household in Tel Aviv, judging who would be permitted to see him and how long meetings would go on for. They retired to the Sde Boker kibbutz in the Negev Desert, where they were buried alongside each other.

Early life

Pauline Munweis was born in the Belarusian city of Minsk, in the Russian Empire, in 1892. She migrated to the United States in 1904, settled in New York City and learned the English language. There Munweis trained as a nurse, specialising in surgical nursing, at the Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. She was an anarchist and an anti-Zionist, and was deeply inspired by the Jewish anarchist Emma Goldman.

Marriage to David Ben-Gurion

Munweis lived and worked in the house of a Jewish doctor, who had opened his New York home to activists of the Labor Zionist political party Poale Zion. There she met the activist David Ben-Gurion, who had moved to the United States following the outbreak of World War I. On 5 December 1917, Munweis and Ben-Gurion married each other in a civil ceremony at the New York City Hall. She also began using Paula as her first name, going by what her husband called her.

A year after the war ended, Paula finally reunited with her husband in Palestine. She insisted on travelling first class, and after a six-week journey, she and her daughter arrived in November 1919.

Spouse of the Prime Minister

On 14 May 1948, Paula witnessed her husband declaiming the Declaration of Israeli Independence at the Tel Aviv Museum, which resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel. David Ben-Gurion became the first prime minister of Israel, with Paula serving as the spouse of the prime minister from 1948 to 1953. She continued taking care of her husband by ensuring he ate, slept and dressed well. She frequently turned away people visiting her husband, including people she thought might exhaust him and those who she did not like.

Death and legacy

Paula Ben-Gurion died in the Beer Sheba Hospital on 29 January 1968, at 76 years old. At her deathbed, her husband read the verse "thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown" (Jeremiah 2:2). She received a simple funeral at Sde Boker, attended by family and members of the Israeli government, and conducted by the chief military rabbi Shlomo Goren. Her body was buried on a cliff next to the Midreshet Sde Boker, and David Ben-Gurion was later buried alongside her.