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. . . .

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)

מײן אַמעריקא (אונזער נײע הימנע) | My America (Our New Hymn) by Morris Rosenfeld (1917)

“My America (Our New Hymn)” was written by Morris Rosenfeld and published by the Jewish Morning Journal sometime mid-April 1917. On April 2nd, the United States had entered the World War against Germany and its allies. In the xenophobic atmosphere of the United States during World War Ⅰ, Representative Isaac Siegel (1880-1947), R-NY, offered the hymn as evidence of the patriotism of America’s “foreign-born” Jewish immigrants. The poem in its English translation was added to the Congressional Record on 18 April 1917 in an extension of remarks. Xenophobia in the United States though did not ebb. Nearly a year later, on April 4, 1918, a German immigrant, Robert Prager, was lynched in Collinsville, Illinois. . . .

Categories: 🇺🇸 Independence Day (July 4th), 🇺🇸 Veterans Day (11 November), 🇺🇸 Thanksgiving Day (4th Thursday of November)

Tags: 20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., American Jewry of the United States, Patriotic hymns, Prayers as poems, rhyming translation, United States home front during World War Ⅰ, World War Ⅰ, Yiddish translation, Yiddish vernacular prayer

Contributor(s): Morris Rosenfeld and Aharon N. Varady (transcription)