Emma Lazarus

Lazarus was involved in aiding refugees to New York who had fled antisemitic pogroms in eastern Europe, and she saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees in terms of the statue. The last lines of the sonnet were set to music by Irving Berlin as the song "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" for the 1949 musical Miss Liberty, which was based on the sculpting of the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World). The latter part of the sonnet was also set by Lee Hoiby in his song "The Lady of the Harbor" written in 1985 as part of his song cycle "Three Women". Lazarus was also the author of Poems and Translations (New York, 1867); Admetus, and other Poems (1871); Alide: An Episode of Goethe's Life (Philadelphia, 1874); Poems and Ballads of Heine (New York, 1881); Poems, 2 Vols.; Narrative, Lyric and Dramatic; as well as Jewish Poems and Translations.

The recorded working language is English and Russian. The field of work recorded is poetry, translating activity and journalism. Works named in the authority record are The New Colossus and The Banner of the Jew. Distinctions recorded are National Women's Hall of Fame.

• Name — Emma Lazarus • Born — 22 July 1849 • Birthplace — New York City, New York, U.S. • Died — 19 November 1887 • Place of death — New York City • Resting Place — Beth Olam Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York City • Occupation — Author, activist • Language — English • Genre — Poetry, prose, translations, novels, plays • Subject — Georgism • Notable Works — "The New Colossus" • Relatives — Josephine Lazarus, Benjamin N. Cardozo • Awards — National Women's Hall of Fame

Emma Lazarus was born in New York City, July 22, 1849, into a large Jewish family. She was the fourth of seven children of Moses Lazarus, a wealthy merchant and sugar refiner, and Esther Nathan (of a long-established German-Jewish New York family). Her siblings included sisters Josephine, Sarah, Mary, Agnes and Annie, and a brother, Frank. One of Emma's paternal great-grandfathers was from Germany; the rest of her Lazarus ancestors were originally from Portugal, and were among the first 23 Portuguese Jews who arrived in New Amsterdam after they fled Recife, Brazil to escape from the Portuguese Inquisition. Her maternal great-great-grandmother, Grace Seixas Nathan (born in Stratford, Connecticut in 1752) was also a poet. Lazarus was related through her mother to Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo. Privately educated by tutors from an early age, Lazarus studied American and British literature, as well as several foreign languages, including German, French, and Italian. She was attracted to poetry in her youth, writing her first lyrics when she was eleven years old.

activists Lazarus was a friend and admirer of the American political economist Henry George. She believed deeply in Georgist economic reforms and became active in the "single tax" movement for land value tax. Lazarus published a poem in the New York Times named after George's book, Progress and Poverty. Lazarus became more interested in her Jewish ancestry as she heard of the Russian pogroms that followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. As a result of this antisemitic violence, and the poor standard of living in Russia in general, thousands of destitute Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from the Russian Pale of Settlement to New York. Lazarus began to advocate on behalf of indigent Jewish immigrants. She helped establish the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York to provide vocational training to assist destitute Jewish immigrants to become self-supporting. Lazarus volunteered as well in the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society employment bureau, although she eventually criticized its organization. In 1883, she founded the Society for the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews. The literary fruits of identification with her religion were poems like "The Crowing of the Red Cock", "The Banner of the Jew", "The Choice", "The New Ezekiel", "The Dance to Death" (a strong, though unequally executed drama), and her last published work (March 1887), "By the Waters of Babylon: Little Poems in Prose", which constituted her strongest claim to a foremost rank in American literature. During the same period (1882–87), Lazarus translated the Hebrew poets of medieval Spain with the aid of the German versions of Michael Sachs and Abraham Geiger, and wrote articles, signed and unsigned, upon Jewish subjects for the Jewish press, besides essays on "Bar Kochba", "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow", "M. Renan and the Jews", and others for Jewish literary associations. Several of her translations from medieval Hebrew writers found a place in the ritual of American synagogues. Lazarus's most notable series of articles was that titled "An Epistle to the Hebrews" (The American Hebrew, November 10, 1882 – February 24, 1883), in which she discussed the Jewish problems of the day, urged a technical and a Jewish education for Jews, and ranged herself among the advocates of an independent Jewish nationality and of Jewish repatriation in Palestine. Some scholars consider her to be one of the forerunners of Zionism. The only collection of poems issued during this period was Songs of a Semite: The Dance to Death and Other Poems (New York, 1882), dedicated to the memory of George Eliot.

• Illustration — Alide: an episode of Goethe's life (1874) Lazarus contributed toward shaping the self-image of the United States as well as how the country understands the needs of those who immigrated to the United States. Her themes produced sensitivity and enduring lessons regarding immigrants and their need for dignity. What was needed to make her a poet of the people as well as one of literary merit was a great theme, the establishment of instant communication between some stirring reality and her still hidden and irresolute subjectivity. Such a theme was provided by the immigration of Russian Jews to America, consequent upon the proscriptive May Laws of 1882. She rose to the defense of her ethnic compatriots in powerful articles, as contributions to The Century (May 1882 and February 1883). Hitherto, her life had held no Jewish inspiration. Though of Sephardic ancestry, and ostensibly Orthodox in belief, her family had till then not participated in the activities of the synagogue or of the Jewish community. Contact with the unfortunates from Russia led her to study the Torah, the Hebrew language, Judaism, and Jewish history. While her early poetry demonstrated no Jewish themes, her Songs of a Semite (1882) is considered to be the earliest volume of Jewish American poetry. A review of Alide by Lippincott's Monthly Magazine was critical of Lazarus's style and elements of technique.

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