This is the sonnet, “The New Collosus” (1883) by Emma Lazarus set side-by-side with its Yiddish translation by Rachel Kirsch Holtman. The translation appears in a section dedicated to Emma Lazarus in Holtman’s 1938 work, Fir Barimte Froyen (Four Famous Women). Lazarus famously penned her sonnet in response to the waves of Russian-Jewish refugees seeking refuge in the Unites States of America as a result of murderous Russian pogroms following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Her identification and revisioning of the Statue of Liberty as the Mother of Exiles points to the familiar Jewish identification of the Shekhinah (the Divine Presence, in its feminine aspect) with the light of the Jewish people in their Diaspora, as found in the Talmud Bavli, tractate Megillah 29a.4:

TOGGLE COLUMNS (on/off):

ADJUST COLUMN POSITIONS: select the column header cell and drag it where you want. show me!

COPY INDIVIDUAL COLUMN(S): use CopyTables, a browser extension.

---

TABLE HELP

תניא ר״ש בן יוחי אומר בוא וראה כמה חביבין ישראל לפני הקב”ה שבכל מקום שגלו שכינה עמהן גלו למצרים שכינה עמהן שנאמר הֲנִגְלֹה נִגְלֵיתִי לבית אָבִיךָ בִּהְיוֹתָם בְּמִצְרַיִם וגו׳ (שמואל א׳ ב:כז) גלו לבבל שכינה עמהן שנאמר לְמַעַנְכֶם שִׁלַּחְתִּי בָבֶלָה (ישעיהו מג:יד) ואף כשהן עתידין ליגאל שכינה עמהן שנאמר וְשָׁב ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֶת־שְׁבוּתְךָ (דברים ל:ג) והשיב לא נאמר אלא ושב מלמד שהקב״ה שב עמהן מבין הגליות

It is taught in a baraita: Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai says: Come and see how beloved the Jewish people are before the blessed Holy One. As every place they were exiled, the Shekhinah (Divine Presence) went with them. They were exiled to Mitsrayim, and the Shekhinah went with them, as it is stated: “Did I reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Mitsrayim?” (I Samuel 2:27). They were exiled to Babylonia, and the Shekhinah went with them, as it is stated: “For your sake I have sent to Babylonia” (Isaiah 43:14). So too, when, in the future, they will be redeemed, the Shekhinah will be with them, as it is stated: “Then YHVH your elo’ah will return with your captivity” (Deuteronomy 30:3). It does not state: Hashem will bring back, (i.e., Hashem will cause the Jewish people to return,) but rather it says: “Hashem will return,” which teaches that the blessed Holy One will return together with them from among the various exiles.

Source(s)

“דער נײער קאָלאסוס | The New Collosus, a paean to the Shekhinah/”Mother of Exiles” by Emma Lazarus (1883, Yiddish translation by Rachel Kirsch Holtman 1938)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.

Rachel Kirsch Holtman (translation)

Rachel Kirsch Holtman (b. 4 Oct 1885 - d. 20 Jun 1962) was a Yiddish author and journalist. She translated works by Lenin and Bukharin into Yiddish and wrote her autobiography in Mayn Lebens-veg (1948).

Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) was a Sepharadi Jewish-American poet, writer, translator, and Georgist from New York City. Her sonnet "The New Colossus" (1883), was inscribed and installed in 1903 on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Upon the proscriptive May Laws of 1881 Lazarus rose to the defense of Russian-Jewish immigrants in powerful articles contributed to The Century (May, 1882, and February 1883). Lazarus became more interested in her Jewish ancestry after reading the George Eliot novel Daniel Deronda, and as she heard of the Russian pogroms that followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. As a result of this anti-Semitic violence, thousands of destitute Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from the Russian Pale of Settlement to New York. Lazarus began to advocate on behalf of indigent Jewish refugees. She helped establish the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York to provide vocational training to assist destitute Jewish immigrants to become self-supporting. In 1883, she founded the Society for the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews. An important forerunner of the Zionist movement, Lazarus argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland thirteen years before Theodor Herzl began to use the term "Zionism." Contact with the Jewish emigrés from Russia led her to study Hebrew, Torah, Judaism, and Jewish history. Her Songs of a Semite (1882) is considered to be the earliest volume of Jewish-American poetry.

Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also translates prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)

Stable Link:    https://opensiddur.org/?p=20604

Associated Image:   

(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in category pages and in shared links on social media.)

Source Data:    XML | JSON

Re-formatted:    HTML | ODT

Terms of Use:    Be a mentsch (a conscientious, considerate person) and adhere to the following guidelines:

1. Properly attribute the work to Rachel Kirsch Holtman (translation), Emma Lazarus and Aharon N. Varady (transcription).
2. Clearly indicate the date you accessed the work and in what ways, if any, you modified it. (If you have adapted the work, let us know so that the contributor might consider endorsing your revision.)
3. Provide the stable link to this resource: <https://opensiddur.org/?p=20604>.
4. Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication. (To redistribute or remix this work in any format, modified or unmodified, you must refer to the terms of the license under which the work is shared.)

Additional Notes:   

• The views expressed in this work represent the views of their creator(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Open Siddur Project's developers, its diverse community of volunteer contributors, or its institutional partners.
• We strongly advise against printing sacred texts and art containing divine names as these copies must be regarded with reverence, complicating their casual treatment and disposal.
• If you must dispose of a printed sacred text (one containing Divine Names), please locate the closest genizah (often established by a synagogue) and contact its custodians for further instructions. We also recommend using Morah Yehudis Fishman's Prayer for Adding a Work to the Genizah.

Support this work:    The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-commercial, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libre Open Access archive of contemplative praxes, liturgical readings, and Jewish prayer literature (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure) composed in every era, region, and language Jews have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide a platform for sharing open-source resources, tools, and content for individuals and communities crafting their own prayerbook (siddur). Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, and foster creativity in religious culture.

ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17