The Feast of Lights, a poem by Emma Lazarus (1882)

Source Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=41204

Date: 2021-11-30

Last Updated: 2024-12-17

Categories: Ḥanukkah

Tags: 19th century C.E., 57th century A.M., English poetry, romanticism, המקבים Maccabees

Excerpt: "Feast of Lights," from Poems of Emma Lazarus, vol. II (1888), pp. 18. . . .

Content:

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	The Feast of Lights
	Kindle the taper like the steadfast star Ablaze on evening’s forehead o’er the earth, And add each night a lustre till afar An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth. Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre, Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn; Chant psalms of victory till the heart take fire, The Maccabean spirit leap new-born.
	Remember how from wintry dawn till night, Such songs were sung in Zion, when again On the high altar flamed the sacred light, And, purified from every Syrian stain, The foam-white walls with golden shields were hung, With crowns and silken spoils, and at the shrine, Stood, midst their conqueror-tribe, five chieftains sprung From one heroic stock, one seed divine.
	Five branches grown from Mattathias’ stem, The Blessed John, the keen-eyed Jonathan, Simon the fair, the burst-of-Spring, the Gem, Eleazar, Help of God; o’er all his clan Judas the Lion-Prince, the Avenging Rod, Towered in warrior-beauty, uncrowned king, Armed with the breastplate and the sword of God, Whose praise is: “He received the perishing.”
	They who had camped within the mountain-pass, Couched on the rock, and tented ’neath the sky, Who saw from Mizpah’s height the tangled grass Choke the wide Temple-courts, the altar lie Disfigured and polluted, who had flung Their faces on the stones, and mourned aloud And rent their garments, wailing with one tongue, Crushed as a wind-swept bed of reeds is bowed.
	Even they by one voice fired, one heart of flame, Though broken reeds, had risen, and w’ere men, They rushed upon the spoiler and o’ercame, Each arm for freedom had the strength of ten. Now is their mourning into dancing turned, Their sackcloth doffed for garments of delight, Week-long the festive torches shall be burned, Music and revelry wed day writh night.
	Still ours the dance, the feast, the glorious Psalm, The mystic lights of emblem and the Word. Where is our Judas? Where are our five-branched palm? Where are the lion-warriors of the Lord? Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre, Sound the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn, Chant hymns of victory till the heart take fire, The Maccabean spirit leap new-born!

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“Feast of Lights,” from Poems of Emma Lazarus, vol. II (1888), pp. 18. According to Dan Vogel in his biography Emma Goldman (1980), the poem was first published in December 1882.

Source(s)

 

Contributor: Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

Co-authors:

• 
  Name: Emma Lazarus
  Bio: 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.
  Website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Lazarus
  Profile Link: https://opensiddur.org/profile/emma-lazarus
• 
  Name: Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
  Bio: 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.)
  Website: https://aharon.varady.net
  Profile Link: https://opensiddur.org/profile/aharon-varady-transcription

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