What could be more appropriate on this 4th of July morning in our nation's 243rd year of independence than a few stirring words from Emma Lazarus (1849-1887), immortalized by their inscription in bronze at the base of the Statue of Liberty?
Lazarus herself was not a refugee, although she had great affinity for those who were. Her ancestors, however, were among the first 23 Portuguese Jews who arrived in what then was New Amsterdam long before the American Revolution as refugees from the Inquisition. Her parents, Moses and Esther Lazarus, were part of a wealthy merchant family that owned its very existence and its prosperity to that long-ago welcome at America's "golden door."
Emma did not live long --- she died in New York at age 38 of what may have been lymphoma --- but she left behind one of the most eloquent reminders of the debt our raggedy ancestors owed that golden door, too. And of our obligation to keep it open to succeeding generations of immigrants who, in their turn, will enrich the nation.
The words are aspirational, of course, and too often those who have benefited from America's beauty, riches and opportunity have tried to slam that door in the face of others who sought opportunity here, too. We tend to ignore that fact that those who found refuge here brutalized the continent's indigenous people to enrich themselves; that the ancestors of a significant percentage of our brothers and sisters arrived as slaves. And we're certainly in a rough spot at the moment. But the promise remains.
Irving Berlin set the last stanza of Lazarus's sonnet to music in 1949. Here, it's performed during 2018 by the Fairfield County (Connecticut) Children's Choir.
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