//essays//
Fall 2019
Fall 2019
Emma Lazarus: A New Colossus
Alyx Bernstein
In 1901, Georgina Schuyler, great-granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton, organized a campaign to have her late friend’s poem mounted on a plaque. On May 6th, 1903, the plaque was unveiled. It was a small, bronze tablet, inscribed with the poem, her friend’s name, her date of birth, and the date of her death. The event merited only a few column inches on the ninth page of the New York Times. 126 years later, the poem, entitled “The New Colossus,” is one of the most famous pieces of American literature ever written.
Emma Lazarus, that friend, was born in 1849 into a tight-knit group of wealthy, famous Sephardi Jewish families in New York City. One cousin, Benjamin Cardozo, was a pro-New Deal Supreme Court Justice alongside Louis Brandeis. Another cousin, Annie Nathan Meyer, raised the funds to found Barnard College. Emma’s family was alienated from the Sephardi community of New York, with Lazarus referring to them as Jewish “outlaws.” They did stay involved in Shearith Israel, however, and celebrated some of the holidays, though not much of Jewish law. They were a secular family, assimilated into New York high society.
As a teen, Lazarus read voraciously and wrote poetry, quickly becoming a talented poet and translator. Her poems did not touch upon Jewish themes until 1867. That year, Lazarus took a trip to visit the synagogue once led by her great-great-uncle Moses Seixas in Newport, Rhode Island. The synagogue was famously visited by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the “American Dante,” in 1852. He wrote a poem entitled “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport,” which described the Jews as “a dead nation.”
Lazarus took it upon herself to correct the record, writing, “In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport” in response to Longfellow. She depicted Newport’s Jews as a thriving community, one with marriages, funerals, and singing. Instead of focusing on the cemetery, she focused on the synagogue, a place of life, “a relic of the days of old… And Eastern towns and temples we behold.” This was the first time she used her tremendous ability to write in defense of her people.
Over the next ten years, Lazarus continued to write poetry. One notable poem, published in 1876, was entitled “Dolores,” a beautiful love poem to the narrator’s bride-to-be, an explicit description of queer love. 1876 also marked another foray into Jewish poetry. In May, she published a translation of German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine’s work. Her encounter with Heine changed Lazarus, inspiring her to write her first literary essay about Heine’s troubled relationship with Judaism.
Not long after these translations were published, Rabbi Gustav Gottheil of New York’s Temple Emanu-El requested that Lazarus translate the Hebrew poetry of medieval Spain into English. In agreement with the rabbi, she translated Solomon ibn Gabirol, Judah HaLevi, and Rabbi Moshe ibn Ezra. Despite her involvement, however, Lazarus was uncomfortable with being associated with these translations. She told Rabbi Gottheil in 1877 that she “cheerfully offered to help you to the extent of my ability, and was glad to prove to you that my interest and sympathies were loyal to our race, although my religious convictions (if such they can be called) and the circumstances of my life have led me somewhat apart from our people.” In modern terms, Lazarus was a secular Jew. But in the 1870s, to herself and Rabbi Gottheil, she was a peculiarity, neither completely assimilated or religious, neither fully “Jewish” nor wholly secular.
At the same time, antisemitism was simmering, both in the US and Europe. In 1877, a Jew was denied lodgings at a Manhattan hotel. This incident and others like it drove a significant shift in Lazarus’ writings. In 1880, she wrote a series of “historical poems anatomizing, satirizing, and excoriating anti-Semitism.” One notable poem of hers depicts Rashi heroically resisting antisemitic mobs in Prague. Lazarus also wrote a play called The Dance to Death, a romance set against a pogrom. The heroine of the play, born a Christian but adopted by Jews, chooses to die among her Jewish family.
In Russia, things were far worse for the Jews. As the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II was blamed on them, a number of pogroms followed, one of the most brutal ones occurring on Christmas Day in Moscow. The world was outraged. Rallies were held in major cities all over the world defending the Jews of Russia. Although a rally in New York was led by several Christian notables, few of the participants were willing to admit that Christianity was a cause for the pogroms. Lazarus wrote a searing dissent, entitled “The Crowing of the Red Cock,” blaming the pogroms on “the flaming sword of Christ.” She recognized that this pogrom was just another incident of a far longer-lasting hatred.
New York’s Ward’s Island quickly filled up with Jewish Russian immigrants living in poor conditions, and the Jewish community responded by founding the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Lazarus used her writing talent to speak for the immigrants, writing an anonymous article in the New York Times on their behalf. She volunteered on the island, taught English to Russian immigrants, and founded organizations to provide vocational training. Despite their differences in language, culture, class, ethnicity, and so much more, Lazarus had an unshakeable sense of solidarity with her fellow Jews that drove her to fight so hard on their behalf.
As time passed, she continued to write poetry defending the Jews. “The Banner of the Jew” called on the Jews to “Wake, Israel, wake! Recall to-day/the glorious Maccabean rage.” In September 1882, her poetic defenses of the Jews and The Dance to Death were published in a book entitled Songs of a Semite. Reviews called Lazarus “a champion of her race” and praised her writings. At a time of an international crisis of antisemitism, the book was certainly needed. She began writing op-eds in the American Hebrew that called for a radical solution to antisemitism: a Jewish homeland. Few American Jews were willing to listen.
Liberty Enlightening the World was meant to be a gift from France to the people of the United States. In 1883, it was an unpopular, expensive project, and only two-fifths of the required funds had been raised. Writer Constance Cary Harrison, in an effort to raise money, asked Lazarus to write a poem. She refused. Harrison told her, “Think of that Goddess standing on her pedestal down yonder in the bay, and holding her torch out to those Russian refugees of yours you are so fond of visiting at Ward’s Island.”
Lazarus took up the charge, writing “The New Colossus,” a vision of America as a haven for immigrants. She followed that up with “1492.” This poem evoked the same idea as “The New Colossus,” though more specifically focused on Jews. Lazarus envisioned America as a new promised land for Jews. As she asserted in the Epistles, America was not an exile, but a unique form of salvation. The poem imagines the Sephardi immigrants of 1492 finally finding a place to call home. This was not a description of America as it was, but as Lazarus wanted it to be. She knew all too well that antisemitism and nativism did exist in her America.
Fame and controversy took its toll on Lazarus, and over the next four years she became progressively sicker. She died on November 19th, 1887. Obituaries poured out, praising her “Hebrew” poetry and calling her “An American Poet of Uncommon Talent.” One Quaker poet wrote, “Since Miriam sang of deliverance and triumph by the Red Sea, the Semitic race has had no braver singer.” From within the Jewish community, she was remembered as a champion of immigrants, and was compared to the Maccabees, Miriam, Deborah, and Esther. A young rabbi’s daughter described her grave as “a garden… to bear richest fruit in the form of deep, steadfast faith, wide knowledge, ripe attainments, and calm wisdom, based upon an unchangeable substratum of sympathy and fervent feeling.” That woman, Henrietta Szold, would go on to found Hadassah and was herself a tireless advocate for Jewish refugees.
Lazarus has often been left out of American Jewish history, but it is time we remember her as a shining example of Jewish activism, art, womanhood and justice. Despite her total disconnect from the Jewish faith, she found an unshakeable sense of Jewish solidarity that drove her tireless work for her Jewish siblings. Emma Lazarus was undoubtedly a colossus in her own right.
Emma Lazarus, that friend, was born in 1849 into a tight-knit group of wealthy, famous Sephardi Jewish families in New York City. One cousin, Benjamin Cardozo, was a pro-New Deal Supreme Court Justice alongside Louis Brandeis. Another cousin, Annie Nathan Meyer, raised the funds to found Barnard College. Emma’s family was alienated from the Sephardi community of New York, with Lazarus referring to them as Jewish “outlaws.” They did stay involved in Shearith Israel, however, and celebrated some of the holidays, though not much of Jewish law. They were a secular family, assimilated into New York high society.
As a teen, Lazarus read voraciously and wrote poetry, quickly becoming a talented poet and translator. Her poems did not touch upon Jewish themes until 1867. That year, Lazarus took a trip to visit the synagogue once led by her great-great-uncle Moses Seixas in Newport, Rhode Island. The synagogue was famously visited by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the “American Dante,” in 1852. He wrote a poem entitled “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport,” which described the Jews as “a dead nation.”
Lazarus took it upon herself to correct the record, writing, “In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport” in response to Longfellow. She depicted Newport’s Jews as a thriving community, one with marriages, funerals, and singing. Instead of focusing on the cemetery, she focused on the synagogue, a place of life, “a relic of the days of old… And Eastern towns and temples we behold.” This was the first time she used her tremendous ability to write in defense of her people.
Over the next ten years, Lazarus continued to write poetry. One notable poem, published in 1876, was entitled “Dolores,” a beautiful love poem to the narrator’s bride-to-be, an explicit description of queer love. 1876 also marked another foray into Jewish poetry. In May, she published a translation of German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine’s work. Her encounter with Heine changed Lazarus, inspiring her to write her first literary essay about Heine’s troubled relationship with Judaism.
Not long after these translations were published, Rabbi Gustav Gottheil of New York’s Temple Emanu-El requested that Lazarus translate the Hebrew poetry of medieval Spain into English. In agreement with the rabbi, she translated Solomon ibn Gabirol, Judah HaLevi, and Rabbi Moshe ibn Ezra. Despite her involvement, however, Lazarus was uncomfortable with being associated with these translations. She told Rabbi Gottheil in 1877 that she “cheerfully offered to help you to the extent of my ability, and was glad to prove to you that my interest and sympathies were loyal to our race, although my religious convictions (if such they can be called) and the circumstances of my life have led me somewhat apart from our people.” In modern terms, Lazarus was a secular Jew. But in the 1870s, to herself and Rabbi Gottheil, she was a peculiarity, neither completely assimilated or religious, neither fully “Jewish” nor wholly secular.
At the same time, antisemitism was simmering, both in the US and Europe. In 1877, a Jew was denied lodgings at a Manhattan hotel. This incident and others like it drove a significant shift in Lazarus’ writings. In 1880, she wrote a series of “historical poems anatomizing, satirizing, and excoriating anti-Semitism.” One notable poem of hers depicts Rashi heroically resisting antisemitic mobs in Prague. Lazarus also wrote a play called The Dance to Death, a romance set against a pogrom. The heroine of the play, born a Christian but adopted by Jews, chooses to die among her Jewish family.
In Russia, things were far worse for the Jews. As the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II was blamed on them, a number of pogroms followed, one of the most brutal ones occurring on Christmas Day in Moscow. The world was outraged. Rallies were held in major cities all over the world defending the Jews of Russia. Although a rally in New York was led by several Christian notables, few of the participants were willing to admit that Christianity was a cause for the pogroms. Lazarus wrote a searing dissent, entitled “The Crowing of the Red Cock,” blaming the pogroms on “the flaming sword of Christ.” She recognized that this pogrom was just another incident of a far longer-lasting hatred.
New York’s Ward’s Island quickly filled up with Jewish Russian immigrants living in poor conditions, and the Jewish community responded by founding the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Lazarus used her writing talent to speak for the immigrants, writing an anonymous article in the New York Times on their behalf. She volunteered on the island, taught English to Russian immigrants, and founded organizations to provide vocational training. Despite their differences in language, culture, class, ethnicity, and so much more, Lazarus had an unshakeable sense of solidarity with her fellow Jews that drove her to fight so hard on their behalf.
As time passed, she continued to write poetry defending the Jews. “The Banner of the Jew” called on the Jews to “Wake, Israel, wake! Recall to-day/the glorious Maccabean rage.” In September 1882, her poetic defenses of the Jews and The Dance to Death were published in a book entitled Songs of a Semite. Reviews called Lazarus “a champion of her race” and praised her writings. At a time of an international crisis of antisemitism, the book was certainly needed. She began writing op-eds in the American Hebrew that called for a radical solution to antisemitism: a Jewish homeland. Few American Jews were willing to listen.
Liberty Enlightening the World was meant to be a gift from France to the people of the United States. In 1883, it was an unpopular, expensive project, and only two-fifths of the required funds had been raised. Writer Constance Cary Harrison, in an effort to raise money, asked Lazarus to write a poem. She refused. Harrison told her, “Think of that Goddess standing on her pedestal down yonder in the bay, and holding her torch out to those Russian refugees of yours you are so fond of visiting at Ward’s Island.”
Lazarus took up the charge, writing “The New Colossus,” a vision of America as a haven for immigrants. She followed that up with “1492.” This poem evoked the same idea as “The New Colossus,” though more specifically focused on Jews. Lazarus envisioned America as a new promised land for Jews. As she asserted in the Epistles, America was not an exile, but a unique form of salvation. The poem imagines the Sephardi immigrants of 1492 finally finding a place to call home. This was not a description of America as it was, but as Lazarus wanted it to be. She knew all too well that antisemitism and nativism did exist in her America.
Fame and controversy took its toll on Lazarus, and over the next four years she became progressively sicker. She died on November 19th, 1887. Obituaries poured out, praising her “Hebrew” poetry and calling her “An American Poet of Uncommon Talent.” One Quaker poet wrote, “Since Miriam sang of deliverance and triumph by the Red Sea, the Semitic race has had no braver singer.” From within the Jewish community, she was remembered as a champion of immigrants, and was compared to the Maccabees, Miriam, Deborah, and Esther. A young rabbi’s daughter described her grave as “a garden… to bear richest fruit in the form of deep, steadfast faith, wide knowledge, ripe attainments, and calm wisdom, based upon an unchangeable substratum of sympathy and fervent feeling.” That woman, Henrietta Szold, would go on to found Hadassah and was herself a tireless advocate for Jewish refugees.
Lazarus has often been left out of American Jewish history, but it is time we remember her as a shining example of Jewish activism, art, womanhood and justice. Despite her total disconnect from the Jewish faith, she found an unshakeable sense of Jewish solidarity that drove her tireless work for her Jewish siblings. Emma Lazarus was undoubtedly a colossus in her own right.
//ALYX BERNSTEIN is a first year at Barnard College. She can be reached at ab4846@barnard.edu.
Photo courtesy of Chen Malul, The Librarians
Photo courtesy of Chen Malul, The Librarians