Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
These words, ascribed on a bronze plaque affixed to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, were penned by American poet Emma Lazarus. Originally written to help raise money to fund pedestal construction, “The New Colossus” portrays the statue as the “Mother of Exiles” whose “beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome,” encapsulating a vision of America as a land of opportunity for immigrants. Lazarus understood the promise that America held for those wishing to emigrate. A part of the migration of Sephardic Jews to America, her own family succeeded in the United States, rising into the upper class.
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