tagged: welcome the stranger • the Open Siddur Project ✍ פְּרוֺיֶקְט הַסִּדּוּר הַפָּתוּחַ

Prayer for Immigrant Justice at an Interfaith Vigil at the Broadview Detention Center, by Rabbi Brant Rosen (2008)

Contributor(s):

Gonzalo Escobar (Spanish translation) and Brant Rosen

A prayer offered at the Broadview Detention Center for an interfaith vigil in support of the detainees and for change in US immigration policy. . . .

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)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription), Rachel Kirsch Holtman (translation) and Emma Lazarus

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. . . .