This is an interpretive translation of Psalms 27 first published by Zackary Sholem Berger on medium.

This paraphrase of the second half of Psalms 19 in English verse by Sir Robert Grant was first published posthumously under the title “Psalm ⅩⅠⅩ” by Robert’s brother Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg) in Sacred Poems by the Late Right Hon. Sir Robert Grant (1839), pp. 28-30. As Charles Grant writes as introduction to the poem, it “is intended as a sequel or counterpart to [Joseph] Addison’s hymn, “The spacious firmament.” It corresponds to the latter portion of the 19th Psalm, as Addison’s does to the former.”

Source(s)

This paraphrase of a portion of Psalms 84 in English verse by Sir Robert Grant was first published posthumously under the title “Part of Psalm ⅬⅩⅩⅩⅣ. Imitated” by Robert’s brother Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg) in Sacred Poems by the Late Right Hon. Sir Robert Grant (1839), pp. 36-37.

Source(s)

This paraphrase of Psalms 71 in English verse by Sir Robert Grant was first published posthumously under the title “Psalm ⅬⅩⅩⅠ” by Robert’s brother Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg) in Sacred Poems by the Late Right Hon. Sir Robert Grant (1839), pp. 31-32.

Source(s)

This paraphrase of Psalms 49 in English verse by Sir Robert Grant was first published under the title “Psalm ⅩⅬⅨ. Imitated.” without attribution in Poems Divine and Moral: Many of Them Now First Published (ed. John Bowdler, 1821), pp. 59-61. It was later published posthumously by Robert’s brother Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg) in Sacred Poems by the Late Right Hon. Sir Robert Grant (1839), pp. 22-24.

Source(s)

This is the poem by Sir Robert Grant known best from its incipit “O Worship the King,” as published posthumously under the title “Psalm ⅭⅣ” by his brother Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg) in Sacred Poems by the Late Right Hon. Sir Robert Grant (1839), pp. 33-35. It was first published without attribution as hymn №31 in the Appendix of Hymns for private devotion, selected and original (ed. Bethia Fuller-Maitland, 1827) on pages 206-207. It was first published with attribution as psalm №104 in Psalms and Hymns for Public, Private, and Social Worship (ed. Henry V. Elliott, 1835) on pages 34-35. Identified as an adaptation of Psalms 104 (and with five of its six stanzas) the hymn was included as №16 in the Union hymnal for Jewish worship (1914). Brian Hehn writes, “This hymn, one of Grant’s most popular, is a paraphrase of Psalm 104. It was originally thought to have been a rendering of William Kethe’s setting of the same psalm in the Anglo-Genevan Psalter of 1561. However, Episcopal hymnologist Raymond F. Glover contends that this is a misconception. He argues that the two settings are in the same meter only because they were written for the same psalm.”

Source(s)

This untitled poem by Sir Robert Grant was published posthumously by Robert’s brother Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg) as the third poem (“Ⅲ”) in Sacred Poems by the Late Right Hon. Sir Robert Grant (1839), pp. 9-11. It was first published without attribution as hymn №19 in the Appendix of Hymns for private devotion, selected and original (ed. Bethia Fuller-Maitland, 1827) on pages 190-191. It was first attributed to Grant as hymn №12 in Psalms and Hymns for Public, Private, and Social Worship (ed. Henry V. Elliott, 1835) on pages 63-64.

Source(s)

“Lights in the Temple” by Rev. John Keble (1792-1866) was initially published anonymously as the first of five poems under the title “Lighting of Lamps” in The British Magazine and Monthly Register of Religious and Ecclesiastical Information (1 March 1834, vol. 5, p. 280). A few years later it was republished under a pseudonym ‘γ’ in a collection of religious poetry, Lyrica Apostolica (1836) (titled “Lights in the Temple” in the Table of Contents under the section “Lighting of Lamps,” pp. 74-75). Keble’s authorship was clearly identified in Miscellaneous Poems, published posthumously in 1868. The poem was one of three by Keble included in the Standard Book of Jewish Verse (ed. Joseph Friedlander and George Alexander Kohut, 1917), pp. 72-73.

Keble, his poetry, and the initial publications it appeared in were strongly associated with the Oxford Movement, a movement of high church members of the Church of England which began in the 1830s and eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. In the sermon, “Jewish Zeal, a Pattern for Christians,” John Henry Newman (1801-1890), argued that Christians should emulate the religious fervor of ancient Israel and criticized the view that “the Jews were almost barbarians”^[1] J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons (3:176-177) as quoted by Mikhail Stetckevich in “The Old Testament and Judaism in the Last Anglican Sermons of John Henry Newman” Hebrew Studies, 2016, Vol. 57 (2016), pp. 204.  Mikhail Stetckevich, writing on the Oxford Movement notes however, “Newman never abandoned supersessionism; in addition, he was a theologian rather than a historian of religion. His interest in Jews was entirely a function of their connection to Christianity; for that reason, Hellenistic Judaism attracted his attention to a much lesser degree than did the beliefs and practices of the biblical period, and he sharply criticized the Pharisees. Newman’s attitude to Judaism after Jesus was profoundly negative; a graphic example of this attitude is in his book Arians of the Fourth Century where he argues that this heresy had Judaic roots.”^[2] ibid. p. 205. Find J. H. Newman, Lectures on Justification (London: J. G. and F. Rivington, 1838, p. 372). 

Whether this context was of very much concern to Friedlander and Kohut is an open question. In their Standard Book of Jewish Verse, they include a number of poems by Christian authors that either romanticize biblical Israel or, in contrast, present a picture of the Jew in the Diaspora in some lachrymose and dismal way. In their Introduction, Friedlander writes,

Poetry may be said at least to have been the ground on which Jew and Gentile could make their common humanity felt, and it is not the least satisfaction to the compiler of this Anthology that here they stand side by side in a great cause, with one aim before them and united in its performance as never before. The history of Jewish Emancipation and the gradual dispulsion of prejudice and injustice may very well be traced through Byron and Lessing and Browning and Swinburne and many others, to these days of liberty and enlightenment, blazing the onward march of civilization through centuries of dark superstition and intolerance, teaching lessons of the highest import to the world of true brotherhood, wise reconciliation of different beliefs and a higher philosophy of life and conduct.

In these, most conspicuous are the poems of non-Jewish poets, who have eagerly employed their gifts to crush down prejudice and oppression. Byron and Lessing were the first in this army of equally distinguished sons of the Muse: Longfellow, Browning, Joaquin Miller, Wordsworth, Townsend and many others. The most eloquent diatribes on the Dreyfus Case were written by Swinburne, and the Russian pogroms called forth a great number of stirring poems by Christian writers…

The Jews of modern times have never done justice to the great service rendered them by Byron, and it would only be fitting that a monument be raised in England to that great poet, commemorating his glorious aid in vindicating for the Jews their rightful place among the nations of the world. So, too, Lessing, in his drama “Nathan the Wise,” and through his friendship with Moses Mendelssohn, brought about a powerful reaction in favor of the Jew. To these two gifted men, must be attributed the impetus that was given to both Jewish and non-Jewish poets to find in the Jew a fit subject for poetical illustration. Most of the distinguished poets of the past and present generation have added to the rich store of poetic lore some sterling work of Jewish interest. These comprise our greatest poets, among them Wordsworth, Browning, Scott, Longfellow, Tennyson, Swinburne, George Eliot, Thomas Bailey Aldrich and others too numerous to mention, but who should be remembered with honor and gratitude.

But beyond the immediate Jewish audience for the Standard Book of Jewish Verse, I imagine that Friedlander and Kohut thoughtfully considered their work speaking to a literate non-Jewish public. After the pogroms of the early 1880s and the activity of the early Zionist movement, the choice of such works in the Standard Book might have been intended to reach a non-Jewish and Christian audience familiar with these authors, and to engage their sympathy in the urgency of a Jewish national and cultural revival. –Aharon Varady

Source(s)

The poem, “The Body Speaking to the Soul Which Just Left It.” by Rosa Emma Salaman, was written in March 1842 and first published in the Occident and American Jewish Advocate 2:4, Tamuz 5604, July 1844, p. 200-202. I have added lines separating the poem into a number of stanzas. –Aharon N. Varady

Source

https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/The-Body-Speaking-to-the-Soul-Which-Just-Left-It-by-Rosa-Emma-Salaman-from-The-Occident-July-1844.pdf

The poem, “God Our Light” by Rosa Emma Salaman, was first published in the Occident and American Jewish Advocate 3:8, Marḥeshvan 5606, November 1845, p.379-380.

Source

https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/God-Our-Light-by-Rosa-Emma-Salaman-from-The-Occident-November-1845.pdf

The poem, “Night” by Rosa Emma Salaman, was first published in the Occident 3:11, Shebat 5606, February 1846.

Source

https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Night-by-Rosa-Emma-Salaman-from-The-Occident-February-1846.pdf

The poem, “Enoch” by Rosa Emma Salaman, was first published in the Occident and American Jewish Advocate 4:9, Kislev 5607/December 1846.

Source

https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Enoch-by-Rosa-Emma-Salaman-from-The-Occident-December-1846.pdf

The poem, “Song of the Spirit” by Rosa Emma Salaman, was first published in the Occident 6:7, Tishrei 5609, October 1848, p. 333-334. In her bound collections of poetry, Poems (1853), it is found on pp. 98-100 under a slightly different title, “The Spirit’s Song.”

In contributing her poem to the Occident, Salaman wrote the following,

I send you these lines of mine, as the idea occurred to me that the beautiful figure kneeling on the tomb, with the tearful eyes and hand pointing towards heaven, might be supposed to be listening to the distant song of the spirit, who has ascended unto the regions of bliss.

Source

https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Song-of-the-Spirit-by-Rosa-Emma-Salaman-from-The-Occident-October-1848.pdf

The poem, “The Angels’ Vigil” by Rosa Emma Salaman, was written in April 12, 1848 and first published in the Occident and American Jewish Advocate 6:3, Sivan 5608, June 1848, p. 127-128.

Source

https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/The-Angels-Vigil-by-Rosa-Emma-Salaman-from-The-Occident-June-1848.pdf

The poem, “A Description of my Dreams” by Rosa Emma Salaman, was first published in the Occident and American Jewish Advocate Vol. 6:4, Tamuz 5608, July 1848, p.175-177.

Source

https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/A-Description-of-My-Dreams-by-Rosa-Emma-Salaman-from-The-Occident-July-1848.pdf

The poem, “Divine Love” by Rosa Emma Salaman, was first published in the Occident 6:7, Tishrei 5609, October 1849, p. 197-198.

Source

https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Divine-Love-by-Rosa-Emma-Salaman-from-The-Occident-July-1849.pdf

The poem, “Elijah” by Rosa Emma Salaman, was written in September 1849 and first published in the Occident 6:7, Kislev 5610, December 1849, p. 455-457.

Source

https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Elijah-by-Rosa-Emma-Salaman-from-The-Occident-December-1849.pdf

The poem, “Twilight” by Rosa Emma Salaman, was first published in the Occident 7:5, Ab 5609/August 1849, p.245.

Source

The poem, “A Vision” by Rosa Emma Salaman, was written November 1850 and first published in the Occident and American Jewish Advocate 9:1, Nissan 5611/April 1851, p.31-33. I have added lines separating this poem into stanzas. –Aharon Varady

Source

https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/A-Vision-by-Rosa-Emma-Salaman-from-The-Occident-April-1851.pdf

“Song” by Rosa Emma Collins née Salaman was published in her bound collections of poetry, Poems (1853), p. 65.

Source(s)

“A Wish” by Rosa Emma Collins née Salaman was published in her bound collections of poetry, Poems (1853), pp. 66-68.

Source(s)

“Future Happiness” by Rosa Emma Collins née Salaman was published in her bound collections of poetry, Poems (1853), p. 35-39. We do not know if it had been published elsewhere prior. If you know, please contact us or leave a comment.

Source(s)

“Thought: A Vision” by Rosa Emma Collins née Salaman was published in her bound collections of poetry, Poems (1853), p. 57-64.

Source(s)

“Angels’ Heads” by Rosa Emma Collins née Salaman was published in her bound collections of poetry, Poems (1853), p. 56-58. For the rabbinic Jewish conception of the keruvim appearing in the likeness of children, find Rabbi Abbahu’s teaching in Chagigah 13b and Sukkah 5b.

Source(s)

“Heaven” by Rosa Emma Collins née Salaman was published in her bound collections of poetry, Poems (1853), pp. 72-76.

Source(s)

“Song for the Open Road” by Walt Whitman was first published in Leaves of Grass in 1856. This Hebrew translation of “Song for the Open Road” can be found in Alei Esev (1952) p.203-216, Shimon Halkin’s Hebrew translation of Leaves of Grass. Halkin leaves the French “Allons!” (let’s go!) untranslated in the Hebrew. I have replaced ‘Allons’ with the Judeo-Arabic, יַאלְלָה (yalla, Arabic: يلا), and in the last stanza קָמַרַדּוֹ (Camerado) with חָבֵר. In part 10, I have replaced Halkin’s choice of word for priests (כֹּהֲנִים) with כְּמָרִים, as Whitman here is referring to non-Jewish priests. Besides this I have made no other changes save some line breaks so that the English and Hebrew lines may better correspond with one another in large displays. These lines in the English may easily be identified as beginning with a lowercase letter, continuing the line for that immediately preceding it. –Aharon Varady

Source(s)

Remember Him, the Only One,
Now, ere the years flow by, —
Now, while the smile is on thy lip,
The light within thine eye.

Remember Him, the only One,
Now, ere the years flow by;
Now, while the smile is on thy lip,
The light within thine eye;

וּזְכֹר אוֹתוֹ, אֶחָד, יָחִיד,
עַד כׇּל־יוֹם יַעֲבֹר,
כׇּל־עוֹד חִיּוּךְ עַל הַשָּׂפָה
וּבְעֵינֶֽיךָ אוֹר.

Now, ere for thee the sun have lost
Its glory and its light.
And Earth rejoice thee not with flowers,
Nor with its stars the Night.

Now, ere for thee the sun have lost
Its glory and its light;
Or earth rejoice thee not with flowers,
Nor with its stars the night.

נָא־עַד קַרְנֵי הָדָר וְאוֹר
סְמוּיִים מֵהַחַמָּה,
עַד בַּל־תָּשִׂישׂ מִכּוֹכָבִים
אוֹ פִּרְחֵי אֲדָמָה.

Now, while thou lovest Earth, because
She is so wondrous fair
With daisies and with primroses.
And sunlit, waving air;

And not because her bosom holds
Thy dearest and thy best,
And some day will thyself enfold
In calm and peaceful rest.

Now, while thou lovest violets.
Because mid grass they wave,
And not because they bloom upon
Some early-shapen grave.

Now, while thou lovest trembling stars,
But just because they shine,
And not because they’re nearer one
Who never can be thine.

Now, while thou lovest music’s strains,
Because they cheer thy heart,
And not because from aching eyes
They make the tear-drops start.

Now, while thou lovest all on earth,
And deemest all will last,
Before thy hope has vanished quite,
And every joy has past.

Now, while thou lovest all on earth,
And deemest all will last,
Before thy hope has vanished quite,
And every joy has past,—

כׇּל־עוֹד תֹּאהַב אֶת־כׇּל־דָּבָר
בָּאָרֶץ וּמִשְׁכּוֹ,
לִפְנֵי תֹּאבַד כׇּל־תִּקְוָתְךָ
וְגִיל יָגִיל עַד־כֹּה,

Remember Him, the Only One,
Before the days draw nigh
When thou shalt have no joy in them,
And praying, yearn to die.

Remember Him, the only One,
Before the days draw nigh,
When thou shalt have no joy in them,
And praying, yearn to die.

וּזְכֹר אוֹתוֹ, אֶחָד, יָחִיד,
לִפְנֵי קָרֵב הַיּוֹם
שֶׁהַשִּׂמְחָה תִּזְנָחֲךָ
וּמוֹתְךָ הַפִּדְיוֹם.

---

“Remember” by Emma Lazarus was written 20 January 1866 and first published in her chapbook, Poems and Translations (1866), page 54. The poem was adapted in an abridged form for a hymn by Rabbi J. Leonard Levy in his The Children’s Service for Use in Religious Schools (1902/1904). (The melody it was adapted for composed by H.S. Cutter as found on page 172 for James Montgomery’s “Solomon’s Prayer for Wisdom” (1860, here entitled “A Wise Heart”).

Source(s)

 

 

]]> https://opensiddur.org/prayers/life-cycle/living/learning/remember-by-emma-lazarus-1866/feed/ 0 https://opensiddur.org/prayers/lunisolar/commemorative-days/mourning-days/tishah-bav/city-of-light-a-poem-by-felix-adler-1882/ https://opensiddur.org/prayers/lunisolar/commemorative-days/mourning-days/tishah-bav/city-of-light-a-poem-by-felix-adler-1882/#respond Mon, 27 Jun 2022 05:20:28 +0000 https://opensiddur.org/?p=45323 Unity: Freedom, Fellowship and Character in Religion vol. 8, no. 12 (16 Feb. 1882), p. 477. ]]> A century before Starship’s pop anthem “We Built this City” (1984), a hymn by Felix Adler — “City of Light” — had become a hit among the Sunday Religious School choir set. The popular hymn was based on a poem published in 1882 and spread by radicals, both religious and secular. In its first incarnation as a hymn, it was reduced from fifteen to six stanzas. By some further clever elisions, the radical nature of the poem was erased and the hymn made palatable for mainstream audiences keen on singing about a heavenly Jerusalem made manifest through legislating their moral virtues on earth. A strong hint as to Adler’s actual intention in the poem can be found in its reference to the poignant conclusion to a history of the Renaissance penned by the art historian Walter Pater. In 1873, two years after the siege of the Paris Commune, Pater wrote, “we are all condamnés, as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve—les hommes sont tous condamnés à mort avec des sursis indéfinis: we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among ‘the children of this world,’ in art and song…” Here is the original text of Adler’s universalist paean to those laboring and bleeding to build a city — a metaphor for a future we help to build (or demolish) but ultimately can only ever imagine before our lives as its builders pass away to the next generation. (For a comparative composition, find Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s Ode [a/k/a “We are the music makers,” 1873].)

“The City of Light” is a poem written by Felix Adler. The earliest publication I could find for it dates to 1882, in Unity: Freedom, Fellowship and Character in Religion vol. 8, no. 12 (16 Feb. 1882), p. 477. The poem also appears in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (March 18, 1882, p. 11) and later that year in The Shaker Manifesto vol. 12, no. 11 (Nov. 1882), pp. 247-248. In the following year it was reprinted in The Radical Review vol. 10, no. 16 (Dec. 1883). This search was not comprehensive; it was likely printed elsewhere.

In the following decades, abbreviated, adapted versions of the poem were included in anthologies of hymns. The first of these I have found was published in The Ethical Record (April 1888) under the title, “City of the Light” (Have you heard of the golden city) containing six of the fifteen stanzas in the poem. This abbreviated version was possibly arranged by Adler himself. (Later versions of the hymn can be found published under other titles: “The City of our Dreams,” and “City of Our Hopes,” or according to its variant incipits: “Sing we of the golden city,” and “Hail the glorious golden city.”) By 1896, “City of the Light” was being sung by choirs in reform synagogues (and churches). In Menorah that year (vol. 20, no. 2, p. 95), the reform rabbi Kaufmann Kohler (1843-1926) is quoted remarking on the significance of the work in his understanding,

Here is the issue between Orthodoxy and Reform, between Christian and Jew. The Christian hopes for the heavenly Jerusalem, which is reached only through the gate of the tomb. The Jew hopes for Jerusalem as the ideal city of righteousness, as the goal of humanity. Only the Orthodox must see it rebuilt in Palestine. The Reform Jew does not look backward, but forward, for the realization of his hope. He beholds in it a grand lofty ideal of human history. Our Sunday-school children sing the beautiful song “The Golden City” in our Sabbath-school Hymnal, the text of which is composed by Felix Adler, but the spirit is thoroughly Jewish. It is the Reform view of Jerusalem of the future, universal and cosmopolitan. With this principle in view, the vision of Jerusalem before the mind, Reform Judaism started in America to build Judaism on a broader and loftier basis, hoping to see this land of liberty and humanity become the Holy Land of Promise for Israel, for mankind. And the Order B’ne B’rith was a leading body to adopt and to propagate these very ideas and principles.

In a lecture on Atheism given at the Society for Ethical Culture 6 April 1879, Adler uses the term “the Golden City” in the context of imaginary human inventions. There he writes, “the fact that we have a complete conception of these places does not at all prove that they exist” (as part of his discrediting an argument for the existence of God via Kant’s philosophy.) It makes sense to me that “City of Light” was composed around that time, when that phrase was percolating in his lectures. If you know of an earlier reference, please leave a comment or contact us. –Aharon Varady

Source(s)

Titled “The Voice of the Lord” in Henry Abarbanel’s English School and Family Reader (1883), this poem was written by Rosa Emma Collins née Salaman (1815-1898). Whether “that day” or “that night” refers to a primordial day of creation or a specific and dangerous storm is unclear, but the language of her poem feels inspired by Psalms (93, 29, and others). The poem was likely published before 1883 elsewhere previously although we haven’t been able to locate where. If you know, please leave a comment or contact us.

Source(s)

This is the poem, “The New Colossus” (1883) by Emma Lazarus. 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. At a time when she was also translating classical Jewish poetry, her identification and revisioning of the Statue of Liberty as the “Mother of Exiles,” points to the familiar rabbinic Jewish identification of the Shekhinah (the Divine Presence, always gendered feminine) with the light of the Jewish people in their Diaspora, as found in the Talmud Bavli, tractate Megillah 29a.4:

Source (Hebrew)

Translation (English)

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).[4] The midrash relies on the shared two-letter root, גל (g’l), between the words exiled (galu) and reveal (niglah).  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., They 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.

I have set the text of Emma Lazarus’s prayer-poem 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). The Hebrew translation was made by Prof. Karen Alkalay-Gut and transcribed by the American Jewish Historical Society as part of their The New Colossus Translation Project. Unfortunately, Karen Alkalay-Gut’s name doesn’t currently appear alongside her translation on their web page. However, a youtube video was separately shared by the AJHS of the translation read by Karen Alkalay-Gut in 2021. Herself a Jewish immigrant who passed through Ellis Island as a child, she offered the following reminiscence:

I was three when I was brought to Ellis Island for a medical examination because the remnants of whooping cough made me suspicious. When I returned to Ellis Island after 70 years I remembered exactly where the doctor’s office had been and how surprisingly pleasant the experience had been. So when my brother excitedly regaled me with having seen the Statue of Liberty, I was just as happy that a nurse and a doctor had welcomed me personally to my new home. Eight years later, having climbed that statue I felt my welcome was complete.

Recordings of the poem were likewise recorded by their translators in other languages: Arabic, Bengali, Catalan, Chinese, Filipino, French, Igbo, Italian, Jamaican Patwa, Persian, Portuguese, Romanian, Scots, Slovak, and Ukrainian. Many thanks to the American Jewish Historical Society’s New Colossus Translation Project for sharing these with the world.

Recordings

Source(s)