Emma Lazarus

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Immigrants View Statue of Liberty

Bonus Episode: Sonnet for America: Reprise

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Just over eight years ago, Judith and Nahanni were looking for solace after Donald Trump rode a xenophobic, misogynistic and hate-filled campaign to his first presidential victory. In a November 2016 episode of Can We Talk?, we turned to the poet Emma Lazarus, the Jewish woman who gave the statue of liberty a voice and transformed her into the symbolic mother of exiles. Now, as President Trump turns refugees and asylum seekers away, tightens our borders, and orders the deportation of thousands of immigrants, that conversation feels relevant all over again. We begin our spring season in March. For now, we're sharing that 2016 episode about Emma Lazarus, "Sonnet for America."

https://jwa.org/podcasts/canwetalk/bonus-episode-sonnet-america-reprise
Repeated images of the Statue of Liberty on the top row. Repeated images of Emma Lazarus on the bottom row.
December 20, 2024

Lifting Our Lamp to Welcome the Stranger

Yona Pianko

Learning about Emma Lazarus' important work aiding Eastern European refugees fleeing from discrimination, violence, and pogroms inspired me to think more deeply about immigration: both its connection to my own life and to today’s world.

Topics: Activism
https://jwa.org/blog/risingvoices/lifting-our-lamp-welcome-stranger

Esther Luria

Esther Luria was a freelance journalist whose work appeared in many politically left-of-center Yiddish publications in the early twentieth-century United States. A socialist, a feminist, and a political activist, she was also an educator. She used her columns not only to advocate for the ideas in which she believed, but also to provide her mainly east European immigrant readers with a better understanding of their new environment.

Rising Voices Fellow Sofia Gardenswartz Reading Grace Paley
November 8, 2017

Paley’s Power on the Daily

Sofia Gardenswartz

Last year, my AP English class read the short prose poem “Mother” by Grace Paley. What struck me the most was its mundane nature. This is a characteristic of nearly all of Paley’s work; she wrote in detail about the daily lives of women—a topic that, when she was writing in the 1940’s, was viewed as tangential to the “real” work of male authors writing bestsellers like The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) or The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton). 

Topics: Schools, Poetry
https://jwa.org/blog/risingvoices/paley-s-power-on-daily
Emma Lazarus
November 1, 2017

Lazarus’ Lessons

Sofia Heller

Emma Lazarus was a 19th century Jewish American writer whose poem “The New Colossus,” engraved on Lady Liberty’s platform, embraces immigrants as they enter the United States. Though she was from an upper class family, Lazarus defied societal restrictions and norms and dared others to do the same.

Topics: Immigration, Poetry
https://jwa.org/blog/risingvoices/lazarus-lessons
Emma Lazarus
November 4, 2014

Mining the Archive: Emma and Immigration

Yana Kozukhin

Long before Emma Lazarus’ words were immortalized on that great copper statue, she was a young Jewish American girl growing up in New York. Throughout her life she produced numerous poems, essays, letters, translations, and even a novel.  

Topics: Activism, Poetry
https://jwa.org/blog/risingvoices/mining-archive-emma-and-immigration
August 14, 2012

Another Emma "Makes Trouble"

Deborah Fineblum Raub

Pregnant women take note: There’s something about the name “Emma” that turns a girl into a prizefighter swinging her fists for human––often specifically women’s––rights, or, as we like to say here at the Jewish Women's Archive, a “troublemaker” in the best sense of the word.

Topics: Activism, Feminism, Politics and Government
https://jwa.org/blog/newest-activist-emma
Ruth Bader Ginsburg from MAKERS
May 30, 2012

Ruth Bader Ginsburg—a fitting culmination for Jewish American Heritage Month

Ellen K. Rothman

As you know if you read the Jewish Women’s Archive blog, May is Jewish American Heritage Month (JAHM).

Topics: Women's Rights, Civil Service, Law
https://jwa.org/blog/ruth-bader-ginsburg-fitting-culmination-for-jewish-american-heritage-month
December 22, 2011

Top 10 Moments for Jewish Women in 2011

Jewesses With Attitude
10. We celebrated the 40th anniversary of Our Bodies, Ourselves
Topics: Feminism, Journalism, Film, Politics and Government, Civil Service, Athletes, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Publishing
https://jwa.org/blog/top-10-moments-for-jewish-women-in-2011
Top 10 Jewish Women in Labor History
March 9, 2011

10 Things You Should Know About Emma Lazarus

Leah Berkenwald

Emma Lazarus was born in 1849 to Moses and Esther Nathan Lazarus, descendants of the pioneering group of Spanish and Portuguese Jews who settled in New Amsterdam in the mid 1600s.

Topics: Labor Rights, Antisemitism, Volunteers, Immigration, Zionism, Poetry
https://jwa.org/blog/10-things-you-should-know-about-emma-lazarus
Top 10 Jewish Women in Labor History
March 1, 2011

The Top 10 Jewish Women in Labor History

Leah Berkenwald

Though we at JWA celebrate women’s history all year round, March brings us the great opportunity of Women’s History Month.

Topics: Activism, Labor Rights, Jewish History
https://jwa.org/blog/top-10-jewish-women-in-labor-history
Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus

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. In her later years, she wrote bold, powerful poetry and essays protesting the rise of antisemitism and arguing for Russian immigrants' rights. She called on Jews to unite and create a homeland in Palestine before the title Zionist had even been coined.

https://jwa.org/womenofvalor/lazarus
September 16, 2009

"Only in America" poll results

Judith Rosenbaum

The results are in from the National Museum of American Jewish History's poll to select the 18 individuals to be featured in their "Only in America" Hall of Fame. The results are not too surprising.

https://jwa.org/blog/nmajh_poll
Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus dies at age 38

November 19, 1887

When Emma Lazarus died on November 19, 1887 at the age of 38, the obituary published in the New York Times referred to her as “an American Poet o

https://jwa.org/thisweek/nov/19/1887/emma-lazarus
Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus writes "The New Colossus"

November 2, 1883

A manuscript copy of Emma Lazarus's famous sonnet, “The New Colossus,” bears the date November 2, 1883.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/nov/02/1883/emma-lazarus
Ruth Gruber, circa 1944

Ruth Gruber finds haven for 1,000 Holocaust refugees

August 3, 1944

When President Roosevelt decided to accept a thousand European immigrants in the midst of World War II and the Holocaust, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes chose the Jewish-American writer and

https://jwa.org/thisweek/aug/03/1944/ruth-gruber
Stern College Students March in Salute to Israel Parade, New York City, 2003.

Zionism in the United States

Jewish women constructed an approach to American Zionism that reflected their own unique position in American and Jewish society, employing the category of gender as a variable in the historical analysis of American Zionism. A complex interplay of gender, social class, and religio-ethnic culture shaped the ways in which women helped to direct the course of Zionism in America.
Film poster for Transparent, an American Comedy-Drama Series

Television in the United States

Jewish women have had a long-standing, complex, often fraught relation to American television. They have had to battle a male-dominated production system and sexist stereotypes, but also have seen significant advances, in front of and behind the screen, resulting from the cable and streaming revolutions and third-wave feminist activism.  

Jessie Sampter, 1934

Jessie Ethel Sampter

Jessie Sampter was an important Zionist activist, writer, and educator. As an influential member of Hadassah, the woman’s Zionist organization, she advocated for an inclusive vision of Zionism. Putting her ideas into practice, she moved to Palestine in 1919. Although Sampter’s disability and non-normative family structure did not align with Zionist ideals of strong, healthy bodies, she championed Zionism, though not always uncritically.

Cynthia Ozick

Poetry in the United States

The contributions of Jewish women poets to American literary history and political activism, as well as to the enrichment of Jewish culture and practice, are astounding. Many Jewish women poets write with a strong sense of social responsibility and a desire to create poetry that can shape reality, drawing on the Jewish teachings of  tikkun olam.

Eve Merriam

Eve Merriam was an accomplished poet and playwright, best known for her books of children’s poetry that are beloved by audiences of all ages. Her life and career centered around New York, where she used her keen critical eye and unique tactile style to create poems and plays about urban life, social justice, feminism, and more. 

Touro Synagogue

Rebecca Touro Lopez

Rebecca Touro Lopez successfully appealed to the Rhode Island State Legislature to preserve the Touro Synagogue of Newport, one of the first cases of the government preserving an unoccupied historic building. The synagogue was restored and became a National Historic Site. Lopez requested a Newport burial and was interred in the cemetery of the synagogue she had fought to preserve.

Josephine Lazarus

Josephine Lazarus was an American Sephardi essayist and literary critic. Her writings exploring issues of Jewish destiny and identity were widely published in leading journals across the country. She is the best known of the poet Emma Lazarus’s five sisters.

Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus (1849-1887), an internationally known poet and essayist, created the role of the American Jewish writer. She lent her voice to the Statue of Liberty to enunciate a vision for America, but she herself was in no doubt about the Jewish roots of her vision in tikkun olam (repairing the world) through righteousness, justice, and compassion.

A group of eleven women posing together in a courtyard

Women, Music, and Judaism in America

This article emphasizes American Jewish women’s multivalent musical choices from the eighteenth through the twenty-first centuries. In doing so, it acknowledges that mainstream Jewish liturgical, educational, art, and “popular” music histories often exclude or minimize women’s participation—as does the very term “Jewish music.” Instead, this article focuses on Jewish-identifying women’s activities in both religious and non-religious settings, rather than seeking to classify the music they create.

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