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Portrait of Emma Lazarus
Thomas Johnson
1790
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Thomas Johnson was an American engraver who produced illustrations for magazines in the 1870s and 1880s. He is best known for several engravings of public figures such as Emma Lazarus, George Eliot, Walt Whitman, and Abraham Lincoln, which he modeled on photographic portraits.
Jewish writing in the period spanning 1750–1880 reflects the profound changes that confronted Jews in modernity. Some writers self-consciously broke with traditional and religious models; others definitely embraced it.
Jewish poets throughout Europe and the Americas created in the languages of their native tongues. From folk-song lyrics to wedding riddles and synagogue hymns, poetry, even in translation, allows us access to voices and moments, particular and collective, that we would otherwise not hear.
A prayer of the prophet Habakkuk. In the mode of Shigionoth.
O Lord! I have learned of Your renown;
I am awed, O Lord, by Your deeds.
Renew them in these years,
Oh, make them known in these years!…
Who cares if eternity won’t know me,
if no one ever watches my footsteps—
but now, right now, when hearts are burning,
I come with fists in my song.
Of course I’d like to sing myself away,
to cry…