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Woman Who Wrote Lady Liberty's Trademark Lines Remembered in Exhibit

By Julie Shapiro | October 26, 2011 5:08pm
**RECROPPED FOR TIGHTER VIEW** The Statue of Liberty's crown, seen Wednesday, May 20, 2009, in New York, is reopening on Independence Day for the first time since terrorists leveled the World Trade Center just across the harbor. After climbing up to the crown, visitors will be rewarded with exhilarating views of New York's skyscrapers, bridges and seaport. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
**RECROPPED FOR TIGHTER VIEW** The Statue of Liberty's crown, seen Wednesday, May 20, 2009, in New York, is reopening on Independence Day for the first time since terrorists leveled the World Trade Center just across the harbor. After climbing up to the crown, visitors will be rewarded with exhilarating views of New York's skyscrapers, bridges and seaport. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
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BATTERY PARK CITY — Emma Lazarus, the woman who penned some of the most famous words ever written about immigrants, was not an immigrant herself.

Lazarus — who in 1883 wrote "The New Colossus," the poem that was later engraved on the Statue of Liberty's base — is the subject of a new exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, in honor of Lady Liberty's 125th birthday this week.

The exhibit traces Lazarus' early life as a fourth-generation American in a wealthy Jewish family, through to her later work with immigrants fleeing Russian pogroms, which led her to advocate on their behalf.

"She knew what it meant to be an insider and an outsider at the same time," said Melissa Martens, curator of the exhibit. "She could see both the challenges and the opportunities."

Lazarus was a respected writer and part of New York's literary circle when a friend approached her in 1883 and asked her to craft a poem to help raise money for a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty.

Lazarus wrote the sonnet that put the now-famous words in Lady Liberty's mouth: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

But Lazarus did not live to see her poem inscribed on the statue's base 20 years later, and it is not known whether she ever saw the statue standing tall in New York Harbor.

Lazarus died of Hodgkin's disease in 1887, at the age of 38, just one year after the Statue of Liberty's dedication and long before it had become widely seen as a sign of welcome to immigrants.

The new exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, called "Emma Lazarus: Poet of Exiles," features a notebook in which Lazarus copied "The New Colossus" shortly before her death, as well as letters between Lazarus and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It also includes the visitor register at Newport, R.I.'s Touro Synagogue, which Lazarus signed during a trip there in 1867.

The museum has created a free walking tour, with an audio track available for anyone to download, which traces Lazarus' steps from her Downtown haunts to her Midtown family home, and also describes what she would have seen as she walked New York's streets more than a century ago.

The tour is narrated by actress Julianna Margulies, from TV's "The Good Wife," and features Meryl Streep reading "The New Colossus."

"Emma Lazarus: Poet of Exiles" will be on display at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Pl., through the summer of 2012.