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July 01, 1983 - Image 2

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 1983-07-01

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

2 Friday, July 1, 1983

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Purely Commentary

Glorious Way of Celebrating Fourth of July: The Task
of Assuring Proper Garb for Statue of Liberty and in
Process Honoring Emma Lazarus and Her 'New Colossus'

Liberty and Its Colossus:
Repairing a Statue Becomes
Patriotic-Sentimental Ideal

great deal of courage."
What Mr. Young did not mention was that Mr.
Abram had twice arranged Dr. King's release
from jail, once for a traffic charge and once for his
role in a department store sit-in. While Dr. King
was in jail on the traffic charge, Mr. Abram acted
as a go-between for the telephone call the civil
rights leader received from John F. Kennedy,
then a Presidential candidate.
Mr. Abram, who served as an important link
between Mr. Carter and the Jewish community in
the 1976 Presidential campaign, announced in
1979 that he could not back his fellow Georgian
for. re-election because Mr. Carter had failed to
show "moral leadership" in handling the incident
that brought about Mr. Young's resignation from
the Carter Cabinet. Mr. Young resigned after giv-
ing conflicting versions of a secret meeting he had
held with a representative of the Palestine Liber-
ation Organization.
The pity is that Andrew Young, already having
fomented discord at the UN, continuing in that spirit in his
mayoralty role as a fraternizer with anti-Israel Arabs,
should have chosen a most respected name for abuse. Mor-
ris Abram has been, continues, as a consistent supporter
of civil rights movements. Even bias from Atlanta will not
erase these facts.

Paul Borman and his associates in the Farmer Jack
supermarkets have done some very interesting planning
for the oncoming Fourth of July celebration. They have
introduced a movement to repair the Statue of Liberty on
Bedloe's Island.
The sentiments of this task are deeply moving and the
mottoes are superb. Referring to the Great Lady on the
shores of New York, the Farmer Jack appeal is, "She's
watched over us. Now let's watch over her."
Thereby the Borman-managed supermarkets call at-
tention, on the eve of the freedom festival, to the famous
poem on the Statue of Liberty and to its author, to Emma
Lazarus and "The New Colossus." Therefore, the opportu-
nity to print again that great poem, which has been recited
a million times and has been put to music:

• The New Colossus

By EMMA LAZARUS
Not like the brazen giant, of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to
land,

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand,
A mighty woman, with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your stories pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore —

Send them, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me —
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Emma
Lazarus' publication of her great poetic work, this com-
mentator wrote in these columns, in the June 9, 1971 is-
sue, about the "Dramatic Story of Emma Lazarus and
`New Colossus': Centenary of Liberty Bard's Poetic Debut."
This is a timely occasion once again to pay honor to the
Colossus Bard. The Lazarus Centennial essay thus referred
to contained these passages:
Emma Lazarus is a name indelibly recorded
in American-Jewish history. "The New Colossus"
which has given her world fame as a champion of
rights for homeless is engraved for all generations
on the Statue of Liberty on Bedloe's Island in New
York Harbor. The basic facts are recorded and
frequently repeated as a reminder of the eminent
poet's role as an interpreter of Jewish ideals.
She was born in New York City, July 22, 1849,
wrote her first poem when she was 14, and in 1871
her first book of verse came off the press. This
year (1971), therefore, marks the centenary of her
emergence as a poet of note whose writings were
commended by Ralph Waldo Emerson and other
noted American writers.
Fifteen years later she was to become world
famous for her poem "The New Colossus" which
was engraved on the Statue of Liberty to be read
by millions to this day.
When her poem "The New Colossus" was cho-
sen for the Bartholdi monument, it was a bright
occasion for the noted poet who died in her 38th
year — Nov. 19, 1887 — only one year after the
poem was immortalized' on the national monu-
ment, the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the
World.
It was on Oct. 28, 1886, that President Grover
Cleveland formally dedicated the Statue of Lib-
erty.
Emma Lazarus, one of the unforgotten
geniuses of American Jewry, was the daughter of
Moses and Esther Lazarus, Orthodox Jews of
aristocratic Portuguese lineage. Raised in weal-
thy and sheltered surroundings, she was edu-
cated by private tutors and spent her youth
among the well-to-do.
She reached the peak of her greatness as the
result of the awakening within her of the Hebraic
spirit. It was always latent but was not brought to
the surface until she was shaken out of her reti-
cence and literary naivete by the pogroms in Rus-
sia and Romania from 1879 to 1882. The tragedy of
these events stirred her so deeply that she turned
her poetic genius to the defense of her people.
In prose and in verse she pleaded for justice to
the Jew. The vigor of her writings and the sincer-
ity of her pleas gave notice that a giant advocate
had arisen to defend the rights of the Jews. In

By Philip
Slomovitz

EMMA LAZARUS

poem after poem, she counseled a Zion rebuilt,
depicted the tragedy of a harassed Israel and
created word pictures which, for prophetic and
beautiful expression of the age-long cry of the
Jews, have seldom been equalled.
The writing of "The New Colossus" was a di-
rect outgrowth of Emma Lazarus' belated but
passionate concern for the safety of her fellow
Jews. Despite her delicate health, she spent many
days visiting the haggard and ragged Jewish im-
migrants from Russia and Romania who crowded
the immigration station on War Island in 1881 and
1882.
Recalling Emma Lazarus and her "Colossus" is a:glori-
ous way of supplementing the appeal to place a new garb on
the Statue of Liberty. To the initiators of the Statue of
Liberty Fund, to Paul Borman who thereby pays honor to
the memory of his father Abraham Borman, and to the
Farmer Jack firm should go appreciation for patriotism and
sentmentality.

Tampering with the Record
Harms Human Relations

MORRIS ABRAM

ANDREW' YOUNG

In the best interests of wholesome Americanism, it is
so very urgent that good relations should not be tampered
with, that strife should be averted, that differing views
should not be cause for anger and hatred!
Affirmative action unfortunately caused some rifts,
the human relations approaches are not always above mis-
representations and distortions, President Reagan's ap-
pointees to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission caused an
animosity that is to be deeply regretted.
The President's naming of Morris Abram as one of his
selectees for that commission became a cause for dispute
and anger. How unfortunate that the name of a consistent
libertarian should have been dragged into a gutter-like
dispute!
In relation to the Abram appointment, Phil Gailey had
an analytical report in the New York Times, in the course of
which he recalled:
Mayor Andrew Young of Atlanta, a former
aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: who served as
President Carter's representative to the United
Nations, recently scoffed at the notion that Mrs.
Abram, a native of Fitzgerald, Ga., had ever been
"directly involved in the civil rights movement" in
the South.
"Morris Abram was a lawyer who got Martin
Luther King out of jail on a traffic ticket," Mr.
Young told reporters, adding, "It didn't require a

Shocking Terrorization
Emerges as a Profanation

Borough Park, a sanctified area in Brooklyn, N.Y., has
been profaned by a mobster element that poses in religios-
ity.
It happened before, when the always kindly and
courteous Lubavitch representatives were molested by a
group that acclaimed itself as an opposition to the Chabad
functionaries.
It is elementary to state that there is no reason for
bitterness by one group toward another, and the record of
activity by the Lubavitcher does not and could not show
even the slightest resentment over the existence of another
faction that calls itself Hasidic. Perhaps the Satmar them-
selves have no explanation for their terrorist tactics
against the Lubavitch and also the Belser Hasidim. The
courts of law now have it on their records that a group that
transported a Satmar terrorist spirit from Hungary has
introduced violence and has inflicted bodily harm on
Hasidim they dislike because they bear the names Bels and
Lubavitch.
There are some 100,000 Jews who are in Hasidic ranks
in Borough Park. They worship in some 100 synagogues.
There was room for all and a unifying spirit beckoned to
them — until some — hopefully the label does not apply to
all Satmar — chose to kidnap, harm, constantly molest
elements that may not even differ too drastically with
them. The terrorists are even accused of arson, and fires
reportedly have been kindled by the terrorists in the syna-
gogues.
It is no wonder that these acts have been branded as a
Hillul haShem — profanation of the Divine Name!
There is much that has happened in Brooklyn that also
is traceable to Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, to the Neturei
Karta who keep shouting that they do not approve of the
Israel that really provides for them. That element that
has sent messages to Hussein of Jordan, inciting him to
rescue them from Jews who are Zionists.
Such is the link that is the inhumanity of fanaticism,
the terror created by a very few whose crimes give the
impression of a massive terroristic force. They are few but
they cause much harm.
Those who know the Lubavitch, sufferers at the hands
of this horrible group, do not need proof of their humility
and rejection of the inhumanities to which their associates
were subjected in Brooklyn. On the local scene, as
elsewhere, the respect and admiration for them remains
intact.

ORT Leaders Toast Herzog

Newly elected Israeli President Chaim Herzog,
right, accepts congratulations from Dr. William
Haber, adviser to the president of the University of
Michigan and past president of the World ORT Union
(left) and Shelley Appleton, chairman of the World
ORT Union Executive Committee at a reception given
by ORT in Jerusalem. Herzog is a former president of
the World ORT Union.

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