Position, see Stephen Birmingham, 'Our Crowd: The Great

On the Sephardic community's privilege and elevated.

As she wrote in one letter, 'I am perfectly conscious that this contempt and hatred underlies the general tone of the community towards us.'

Despite her father's efforts and her elite Sephardic background, her outsider status was never entirely erased. Moses Lazarus, Emma's father, sought to secure a place for his family among the Christian elite.Īlthough Emma's friends were almost all Christian, she was usually referred to and seen as a 'Jewess.' As Emma knew, prejudice often lurked beneath the polite surface of wealthy society. While Emma's devout ancestors and relatives were actively involved with the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue, her immediate family was 'outlawed' among the extended Lazarus clan because it was no longer religiously observant. Those like Emma Lazarus' family, who had lived in America since before the Revolution, were the refined, 'true Hebrews.' According to Hilton, only the dirty, greedy, German immigrant 'Seligman Jews' were unwanted. Judge Henry Hilton, the Grand Union Hotel's owner, explained he had no objection to the Sephardic elite. Anti-semitism had begun to sweep over Europe as the rates of Eastern European Jewish immigration climbed, the American climate became less tolerant. to admit Joseph Seligman, a wealthy Jewish banker of German extraction, was a sign of change. However, in 1877 the highly publicized refusal of the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, NY. On the Lazarus family and Sephardic history see Stephen Birmingham, 'Our Crowd”: The Great Jewish Families of New York (New York: Harper and Row, 1967) 29.Įxplicit acts of discrimination were rare during the early years of Emma's life. He also built his family a summer 'cottage' in Newport with the rest of fashionable society.įor chronological material and Moses Lazarus' Christian society contacts see Bette Roth Young, Emma Lazarus in Her World: Life and Letters (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1995) 6-7. He moved in wealthy Christian circles, joined the exclusive Union club, and founded, together with Vanderbilts and Astors, the elite Knickerbocker club.

From them, Emma inherited a rich pride in her Sephardic heritage, and often wrote about the medieval scholars and poets of her ancestors' land.Ī prosperous sugar refiner, Moses Lazarus was eager to see his family more integrated into Christian society. As descendants of this pioneering group of Sephardic (Spanish and Portuguese) Jews, Emma's family belonged to a distinct Jewish upper class. The Lazarus family traced their ancestry back to America's first Jewish settlers. In 1866, when Emma was seventeen, he privately published her first book, Poems and Translations Written Between the Ages of Fourteen and Seventeen. Her father Moses Lazarus recognized his young daughter's talent and began to encourage her work. Her siblings included Josephine Lazarus who was also a well known writer and a featured speaker at the 1893 Jewish Women's Congress.Įmma's early poems and translations show she had a strong classical education and a mastery of German and French. Born in 1849 to Moses and Esther Nathan Lazarus, she grew up around New York's vibrant Union Square. At the same time, her complicated identity has obscured her place in American culture.Įmma Lazarus was the fourth child in a wealthy family of seven children. The difficult experiences lent power and depth to her work. As a woman she dealt with unequal treatment in both. She called on Jews to unite and create a homeland in Palestine before the title Zionist had even been coined.Īs a Jewish American woman, Emma Lazarus faced the challenge of belonging to two often conflicting worlds. In her later years, she wrote bold, powerful poetry and essays protesting the rise of antisemitism and arguing for Russian immigrants' rights. One of the first successful Jewish American authors, Lazarus was part of the late nineteenth century New York literary elite and was recognized in her day as an important American poet. Over the years, the sonnet has become part of American culture, inspiring everything from an Irving Berlin show tune to a call for immigrants' rights. Written in 1883, her celebrated poem, 'The New Colossus,' is engraved on a plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'Įmma Lazarus's famous lines captured the nation's imagination and continues to shape the way we think about immigration and freedom today.

Emma lazarus biography