yearning to breathe free

We’re getting ready at the Wackerlin Center to welcome an exhibit on the life and work of the poet and activist Emma Lazarus.  The more I learn about this woman and her work, the more excited I’m becoming about celebrating her life and reflecting on her legacy.  In many respects, hers is a story about the experience of America itself.

Born to a wealthy New York family, Lazarus grew up quite insulated and protected from the harsher realities of life, and moved in elite artistic and literary circles.  Her early friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson shaped her vocation to poetry, and she published youthful volumes of work showing considerable promise.

It was the arrival of refugees from the East, Jews fleeing dreadful persecution in Europe, that changed Lazarus’s life and outlook.  She threw herself into volunteer work, greeting those whose lives had been ravaged by prejudice and violence, and working to educate and resettle all who sought a new home in America.  Although sometimes critical of traditional religious practice, she discovered in this a distinctively Jewish voice, enunciating the biblical principles of welcome, hospitality and generosity, especially to strangers and refugees, as the values which ought to undergird the United States.  Decades before her time and to considerable disdain, she advocated for the creation of a Jewish homeland.  She saw the potential dangers of global anti-Semitism in the 1880s, sixty years before the devastation of the Shoah under the Nazis.

It was the gift of the statue Liberty Enlightening the World from France to the USA that raised Lazarus to her greatest contribution.  While Americans struggled to embrace – or fund – a project whose purpose was unclear (save uniting the French and Americans in a common hatred of the British!), Lazarus and her friends tried to raise money to erect the monument.  She wrote for a fund-raising event a poem: The New Colossus, which redrew Lady Liberty as the ‘Mother of Exiles’, a symbol of generous, welcoming America, the champion of justice and diversity, whose presence in the world would be a restraint on tyranny and a healing balm to the persecuted. 

It was two decades after her death in 1887, aged just 38, before her poem  finally became the defining word on the statue.  Today, it is affixed to the pedestal, a permanent reminder of Lazarus’s contribution to the forging of national self-understanding.  Her biographer, Esther Schor, who curates our exhibition, has written:

“She showed America how to become more generous, more noble, and more just. Her passion for justice lives on whenever we Americans dedicate ourselves to welcoming immigrants, training and educating the poor, and celebrating diversity.”

The exhibit opens in the atrium of the Institute for Collaboration on October 31^st and will be open to the public 9am-8pm every weekday until December 16^th.   In addtion we have three exciting events, all in Crimi Auditorium, all free and all open to everyone!

November 3^rd: ‘From Slavery to Freedom’ (3.30-5.00pm)

Magda Brown returns to tell her refugee story, coming to the US after surviving the Nazi Holocaust

November 15^th: ‘Emma Lazarus: A Passion for Justice’ (12.00-1.00pm)

Rabbi Prof. Victor Mirelman on Lazarus and the quest for human dignity

December 7^th: ‘Emma Lazarus and Us’ (3.30-5.00pm)

AU faculty including President Rebecca Sherrick offer concluding reflections and discussion

More at our website: http://aurora.edu/student-life/wackerlin/emma-lazarus.html#axzz1ax7A7GnG

Call us on 630.844.6864 or 6866 or email wcfa@aurora.edu for more information or to book a place for yourself or a group.

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