Pro-Semitism

Emma Lazarus

By Jerry Brodsky

You’ve heard the words –

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

For many of us, our great-great-grandparents or some level of elders on our family tree passed by those words, found on the base of the Statue of Liberty, as they entered the United States through New York City.

Indeed, it may or may not surprise you to learn that over 20 million immigrants sailed past Lady Liberty between 1855 and 1954, fulfilling a dream to come to America and arriving at Ellis Island or, before that, New York’s Castle Garden processing center.

But what you probably don’t know is that those words are from a poem written by a 34-year-old Jewish-American woman, Emma Lazarus, in 1883, and used to help raise funds for the statue’s pedestal. Inspired by her work helping immigrants who had been detained by officials at the immigrant process center, she wrote The New Colossus.

Twenty years after her death, the words from her sonnet were inscribed on a plaque and placed on the inner wall of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, where it sits today, a replica of which can be found inside the Statue of Liberty Museum.

If you have a minute, you might want to read the whole 14-line sonnet.

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, (November 2, 1883)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

From:

1. National Park Service (Official website of the United States), Statue of Liberty, National Monument, New York. https://www.nps.gov/stli/learn/historyculture/emma-lazarus.htm and https://www.nps.gov/stli/learn/historyculture/colossus.htm
2. Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46550/the-new-colossus

Jerry Brodsky is a HaD’var contributor.