Opening prayer for the Ceremonies at the Site of the Statue of Religious Liberty by the Independent Order of B’nai Brith, by Rabbi Sabato Morais (5 July 1875)

This was the opening prayer offered by Rabbi Sabato Morais at the “Ceremonies at the Site of the Statue of Religious Liberty by the Independent Order of B’nai Berith” for the Celebration of the Ninety-Ninth Anniversary of American Independence in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, July 5th, 1875 and published in a booklet containing the same. The site of the ceremonies was “the Walnut Street Railway, near the Centennial grounds.” The statue, “Religious Liberty,” was commissioned by B’nai B’rith and dedicated “to the people of the United States” as an expression of support for the Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. It was created by Moses Jacob Ezekiel, a B’nai B’rith member and the first American Jewish sculptor to gain international prominence. . . .

Categories: 🇺🇸 Independence Day (July 4th)

Tags: 19th century C.E., 57th century A.M., American Jewry of the United States, dedications and consecrations, English vernacular prayer, liberty, statues of liberty, United States centennial

Contributor(s): Sabato Morais and Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

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)

This is the sonnet, “The New Collosus” (1883) by Emma Lazarus set side-by-side with its Yiddish translation by Rachel Kirsch Holtman. 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. . . .

Categories: 🇺🇸 Mother's Day (2nd Sunday of May), 🇺🇸 Independence Day (July 4th), 🇺🇸 Thanksgiving Day (4th Thursday of November)

Tags: 19th century C.E., 57th century A.M., shekhina, statues of liberty, welcome the stranger

Contributor(s): Rachel Kirsch Holtman (translation), Emma Lazarus and Aharon N. Varady (transcription)