Born in Czarist Russia, but raised in Milwaukee and Denver, Golda Meir emigrated to a Israeli kibbutz in the 1920s. In 1948, when Jewish leaders despaired over raising money to finance the means for Israel to defend itself, she traveled to the United States and came back with $50 million. Founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion wrote that history would remember her as the "woman who got the money which made Israel possible." On May 10, 1948, four days before the official establishment of Israel, she met secretly with Jordan’s King Abdullah who asked her not to hurry to proclaim a state. Meir replied: "We've been waiting for 2,000 years. Is that hurrying?" She was elected to the Knesset in 1949 and became Prime Minister on March 17, 1969. Ben-Gurion liked to call her "the best man in our government." The press portrayed her as the strong-willed, straight-talking, grey-bunned grandmother of the Jewish people who led her people to an impossible victory in the 1973 Yom Kippur War .