June 16, 2021
Two Favorite Poems, and How they Define Israel and America
By Dr. Ruth Wisse"The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus and "The Silver Platter" by Natan Alterman distill, reinforce, and hallow what makes each nation distinctive.
The Nobel Prize Committee did us a favor when it awarded the 2016 prize for literature to Bob Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” If previous laureates like T.S. Eliot had us believe that poetry was an intellectual challenge, the award to Dylan reminded us that poems can also be our collective voice. They can say what needs saying.
Jews have always known this, and poets who experience themselves as part of a people can help to explain the nation to itself. The problem is that when they succeed, we tend to take their work for granted and lose sight of the originality behind the cliché. It bears thinking about how an individual can forge the soul of a nation and even help chart its destiny.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. . . .
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.