Between Two Promised Lands

The same year that Emma Lazarus wrote her famous inscription on the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," she also wrote a far more obscure poem commemorating the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. "The New Year," written in 1883, foreshadowed the growing division of the Jewish people. "In two divided streams the exiles part, One rolling homeward to its ancient source, One rushing sunward with fresh will, new heart. By each the truth is spread," Lazarus wrote, anticipating what would become the defining internal conflict of Jewish life more than a century later: the deep communal rift between American Jews and Israel, which forms the subject of Daniel Gordis' new book, We Stand Divided.