I was taught this dream by my parents, taught that I should be proud of being American, not because we were “the greatest,” whatever that means, but because we were the melting pot. For them the rejection of the old world of monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, and the dream of a new world of freedom and safety, came true. None of them ever became rich, but they survived. To them as Jews, America was the land of opportunity, of hope for the hopeless. All my grandparents came to this country in the 1880s, at just the moment that inspired the poem. And the words Lazarus has this figure cry “with silent lips” still bring tears to my own eyes, tears of admiration and gratitude.įor me, this poem’s beauty cannot be separated from my family’s history. Naming this woman “Mother of Exiles,” calling her eyes “mild yet commanding,” and announcing that she stands for “worldwide welcome” is a stroke of radical insight into what America was and could become. I’m thinking of Benjamin Franklin’s experiments with electricity here. Instead of warrior-like pride, here is a mighty woman whose torch is imprisoned lighting, a beautiful phrase implying technological innovation. The brazen giant of Greek fame was the Colossus of Rhodes, once one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It claims that we represent not war and conquest but freedom, enlightenment, and compassion. But in 1903, a plaque bearing the text of the poem was mounted on the inner wall of the statue’s pedestal. “The New Colossus” was the only entry read at the exhibits opening but was forgotten and played no role at the opening of the statue in 1886. But Emma Lazarus, in the 1880s, was deeply engaged in advocating for the flood of destitute Jewish immigrants fleeing anti-Semitic violence in Russia and throughout Eastern Europe, and so she wrote a poem that succeeded, surely beyond her wildest dreams, in changing the meaning of the statue and the meaning of the United States of America.
The statue was originally intended as a monument to international republicanism and friendship between the United States and France. Initially Lazarus was not interested in contributing a poem, but a friend convinced her that the statue would be of great significance to immigrants sailing into the harbor. The poem was written by the American-Jewish poet Emma Lazarus, as a donation to an auction of art and literary works intended to raise money to build a pedestal for the colossal statue just given by France to the United States-“Of Liberty Enlightening the World,” as the Statue of Liberty was originally named. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” proclaims the Mother of Exiles, in words that reverberate today as a definition of what America offers to the world.
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