Unlike the time of the Damascus affair in 1840 (see above, p. 193), the Jews of America not only took the leading part in arousing public opinion against the outrages, but they could do much more than enlist the sympathies of their non-Jewish fellow-citizens: they collected money to aid the sufferers and bade them welcome to these shores. A call for “A meeting of the citizens of New York without distinction of creed, to be held on Wednesday evening, February 1st, 1882, ... for the purpose of expressing their sympathy with the persecuted Hebrews in the Russian Empire,” was signed by about seventy-five of the most prominent non-Jewish citizens of New York, headed by ex-President U. S. Grant. The memorable meeting was held in Chickering Hall, and was presided over by Mayor William R. Grace; it was addressed by distinguished men in various walks of life, including three Christian clergymen, and had a marked effect on public opinion. It was on the same day that a similar meeting, at which the Lord Mayor presided, was held in London, at the Mansion House. Two weeks later (February 15) a meeting of the same nature with the same excellent moral result was held in Philadelphia, where four clergymen, two of them Protestant Bishops and one representing the Roman Catholic Archbishop, were among the speakers. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society collected over $300,000 for the new arrivals, and nearly two-thirds of that sum was contributed by residents of this country, the balance coming from Germany, England and France. Some groups of immigrants were given a public welcome; temporary quarters were built for their accommodation on Ward’s Island and at Greenpoint, L. I., where several thousand were housed and maintained until they found employment.
There was one other voice raised at that time in behalf of the Jew and of Judaism, only to be prematurely silenced forever a few years afterwards. The most gifted poet which American Jewry has produced, Emma Lazarus (b. in New York 1849; d. there 1887) was aroused, and her noble spirit reached its full height, by the stirring events of the martyrdom of the Russian Jew. Like so many other intelligent Jews in various countries, Emma Lazarus, the daughter of an old Sephardic family of social position, the friend of Emerson and other noted literary men, was up to that time mainly interested in general and classic subjects, and devoted to them her poetical and literary talents. “She needed a great theme to bring her genius to full flower, and she found that theme in the Russian persecution of 1881.... Her poetry took on a warmer, more human glow; it thrilled with the suffering, the passion, the exaltation of a nation of the Maccabees.”[44] Her family, though nominally Orthodox, had hitherto not participated in the activities of the synagogue or of the Jewish community. But contact with the unfortunates from Russia led her to study the Bible, the Hebrew language, Judaism and Jewish history. She suggested, and in part saw executed, plans for the welfare of the immigrants. The fruit of her latter literary activity include “_Songs of the Semite_” (1882); “_An Epistle to the Hebrews_”; poems like “_The Banner of the Jew_,” “_The New Ezekiel_,” and “_By the Waters of Babylon: Little Poems in Prose_” (1887), her last published work. A collection of her works, in two volumes, appeared after her death (1889), and in 1903 a bronze tablet commemorative of her was placed inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. (See _Jewish Encyclopedia_, s.v. Lazarus, Emma, by Miss ♦Henrietta Szold.)