Who Is the "Mother of Exiles"? Jewish Aspects of Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus".(Critical Essay)

This article exposes the influence and expression of Emma Lazarus's Jewish background and literary heritage in her renowned sonnet on The Statue of Liberty, "The New Colossus." Despite no explicit reference to Jews or Judaic sources, the poems profoundly Jewish character is disclosed through a close look at the context in which it emerged, its place in Lazarus's biographical and artistic development, and its actual content. "The New Colossus" would seem to give voice to local aversion to the presumptuous French gesture of bestowing Liberty upon America by rejecting its original symbolism and suggesting one that transforms the Statue into a New World heroine. However, Lazarus wrote the poem when her energies and writing were primarily devoted to championing the cause of Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe in the early 1880's. Moreover, a record of its commission clearly reveals that she was enticed to write the sonnet on the basis of this concern. Thus, in the work itself, Lazarus shrewdly stated her case for the American intake of Jewish immigrants by not referring to them directly and attempting instead to compel her audience to live up to a Hebraic definition of America as redeemer of persecuted peoples. It is claimed that Lazarus ventured this feat by drawing her image of the Statue from a Jewish tradition that viewed the biblical matriarch Rachel as "Mother of Exiles."

 
   THE NEW COLOSSUS 
 
   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!" 

THE WORKS OF FEW JEWISH WRITERS among the nations have reached the canonical stares attained in Americana by the last four and a half lines of Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus." However one might judge their literary quality, it is arguable that a majority of Americans, and perhaps an even larger group of English-speakers around the world, will almost automatically recognize these lines and associate them with America's leading symbol, the Statue of Liberty. While the majority of those who recognize these lines might not be capable of actually reciting them by heart, or even of indicating the title of the sonnet in which they are found, the name of its author, or the date of its composition, they would still, in most cases, assume that these lines speak for Liberty itself.(1)

The question remains, however, as to whether Emma Lazarus's Jewishness had anything at all to do with the actual content and widespread popularity of "The New Colossus." Indeed, the fact that the poem includes on explicit reference to Jews, Judaic sources, or events in Jewish history would seem to suggest that its substance and history go well beyond the influence and scope of something Jewish in Lazarus's life and letters. Nevertheless, in what follows, I shall argue that the poem's allusions are profoundly bound up with the Jewish biography and literary heritage of its author, and I will suggest that this Jewish influence must be taken into account as a factor in the poem's renown.

1

While one might naturally assume that "The New Colossus" would not include Jewish references, it is quite surprising to discover that the poem makes no real mention of the Statue of Liberty as well. Ironically, one could never know from the verses that are most commonly associated with the Statue that there is a giant edifice called Liberty Enlightens the World standing in the New York harbor, that it was fashioned as the Roman goddess Libertas, and that this goddess holds the American Declaration of Independence in one hand while casting the light of freedom from the uplifted torch in her other hand to countries all over the world. This striking omission, I would submit, is the appropriate point of departure for the exploration into the Jewish aspects of "The New Colossus," for Lazarus's negation of Liberty's original symbolism appears to have been the first step she took toward the introduction of an alternative symbolism for the Statue that she drew from Jewish sources.

The story of Lazarus's negative response to Liberty is an intricate one that cannot be grasped on the basis of a reading of "The New Colossus" alone, without any recollection of the events that led up to its writing in 1883. The linchpin is in Lazarus's reference to "the brazen giant of Greek fame"--the Colossus of Rhodes--as the negative contrast to her "New Colossus." Though her associative powers and mastery of classical and renaissance history and literature were undoubtedly strong enough for her to make such a comparison, it had already become common knowledge at the time, since it was repeatedly used as a fund-raising device for the erection of Liberty in America. Seeing as the proposed Statue would be physically bigger than the Rhodian Colossus, whose hitherto unequaled proportions distinguished it as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, fund-raisers made the comparison so as to convince people that their contributions would help put America on the map of world history. In fact, so prevalent was this association by that time, both in speech and in print, that, as one of the leading scholars on the Statue has put it, "Liberty was associated in everybody's mind with the Colossus of Rhodes."(2)