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.)