Come to my next speaking engagement at the Temple Anshe Hesed at 930 Liberty St. in Erie, Pa. While it's snowing outside, it will be warm with intellectual and inspirational exchanges inside. The talk starts at 10:30 a.m., but make note that this is the spring forward day of Daylight's Savings Time, so that will be 9:30 a.m. our time.
I am speaking on the topic of Emma Lazarus, who is best known for writing the sonnet the accompanied the Statue of Liberty, entitled "The New Colossus." The words, "give me your tired your poor" have been indelibly linked with the spirit of freedom that the statue has come to stand for, especially with the waves of immigration it welcomed for over a century. But Emma Lazarus was much more than just that sonnet. She was an intellectual who was befriended by Ralph Waldo Emerson and other aesthetes of her time, being heralded as one of the foremost poets of her ear. She sadly has been lost to history like so many other prominent women of her time, and many do not even know who she is today. She was also Jewish, and had to balance her multiple identities as a woman, American, Jews and poet--something she would be straddled with her entire life and finally made some sense of before she died.
Hope to see you there!
No comments:
Post a Comment