carcely comprehend the situation or credit the reports, and for a while
we shut our eyes and ears to the facts; but we were soon rudely awakened
from our insensibility, and forced to face the truth. It was in England
that the voice was first raised in behalf of justice and humanity.
In January, 1881, there appeared in the "London Times" a series of
articles, carefully compiled on the testimony of eye-witnesses, and
confirmed by official documents, records, etc., giving an account of
events that had been taking place in southern and western Russia during
a period of nine months, between April and December of 1880. We do
not need to recall the sickening details. The headings will suffice:
outrage, murder, arson, and pillage, and the result,--100,000 Jewish
families made homeless and destitute, and nearly $100,000,000 worth of
property destroyed. Nor need we recall the generous outburst of sympathy
and indignation from America. "It is not that it is the oppression
of Jews by Russia," said Mr. Evarts in the meeting at Chickering Hall
Wednesday evening, February 4; "it is that it is the oppression of men
and women, and we are men and women." So spoke civilized Christendom,
and for Judaism,--who can describe that thrill of brotherhood, quickened
anew, the immortal pledge of the race, made one again through sorrow?
For Emma Lazarus it was a trumpet call that awoke slumbering and
unguessed echoes. All this time she had been seeking heroic ideals in
alien stock, soulless and far removed; in pagan mythology and mystic,
mediaeval Christianity, ignoring her very birthright,--the majestic
vista of the past, down which, "high above flood and fire," had been
conveyed the precious scroll of the Moral Law. Hitherto Judaism had been
a dead letter to her. Of Portuguese descent, her family had always been
members of the oldest and most orthodox congregation of New York, where
strict adherence to custom and ceremonial was the watchword of faith;
but it was only during her childhood and earliest years that she
attended the synagogue, and conformed to the prescribed rites and usages
which she had now long since abandoned as obsolete and having no bearing
on modern life. Nor had she any great enthusiasm for her own people. As
late as April, 1882, she published in "The Century Magazine" an
article written probably some months before, entitled "Was the Earl of
Beaconsfield a Representative Jew?" in which she is disposed to accept
as the type of th