Emma Lazarus. Songs of a Semite: The Dance to Death, and Other Poems.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

Philip Cowen

New York

1882

Singerman 3081

Born into a New York Sephardic family, Emma Lazarus (1849-87) was one of the most celebrated American poets of the nineteenth century, but it was only by way of her Songs of a Semite that she became known as a Jewish poet per-se. Initially indifferent to her Jewish heritage, her early verse exhibited no Jewish influences. After the Russian outrages of 1881 however, Lazarus emerged as a spokesperson for refugees from Russian pogroms and as an advocate for the return to Zion. Lazarus broke new literary ground with Songs of a Semite, which, as its title boldly proclaims, was saturated with Jewish themes. This literary volte-face was greeted with critical acclaim by reviewers in the general press, who encouraged her to continue drawing inspiration from her Jewish heritage. Lazarus’s celebrated sonnet “The New Colossus” was inscribed on the pedestal of the Staue of Liberty in 1903 - a beacon to the “huddled masses yearning to breath free.” See JTSA Catalogue, People of Faith, Land of Promise (2004) pp. 112-3.