![]() Modest, retiring, gentle, almost timid in manner, she was yet a woman of the soundest judgment and of sure taste…. Josephine’s death is to very many friends a tragedy which they are unwilling to leave without a word of remembrance. The day after Lazarus’s death on February 4, 1910, the New York Tribune published a letter to the Editor signed by F. The last essays to be published in her life sought to bring together her deep concern for Jewish safety and her strong belief in the power of a transcendent universal faith. She penned a short book on Madame Dreyfus in 1899. Like many of her contemporaries, Lazarus was profoundly affected by the pervasive antisemitism unmasked during the Dreyfus Affair, and she began to consider political Zionism as a viable option for European Jewry. …The Jew must change his attitude before the world and come into spiritual fellowship with those around him….” Reflecting the influence of contemporary liberal Christian writers, and her own exposure to the compelling transcendentalist movement, Josephine proposed the embrace of a universal humanism: “Away with all the Ghettos and with spiritual isolation in every form. Josephine saw the challenge of these dispossessed immigrants in very different terms. Lazarus’s understanding of Jews and Judaism provides a stark alternative to her sister Emma’s political and social analysis, which led the latter to found the short-lived Society for the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews to help Jews resettle in Palestine. Antin later dedicated The Promised Land to Lazarus’ memory, and she may have named her only child after her mentor. She was one of the first to review Antin’s autobiographical first work, From Plotzk to Boston. Lazarus was engaged with writers and thinkers both within and beyond her immediate social circle, including Jessie Ethel Sampter and Mary Antin. Max Leopold and was quoted and summarized the following day in the Chicago Tribune. Her essay, “The Outlook for Judaism,” was read by a Mrs. Like other Jewish presenters at the Congress, Lazarus emphasized the spiritual identity of Judaism, introducing her vision of combining the truths of Judaism and Christianity in a non-sectarian ethical monotheism. In 1893, Lazarus was one of the few Jewish women invited to speak at the Congress of Religions at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Lazarus subsequently wrote a series of reviews and literary biographies of contemporary women writers, including an essay on the transcendentalist and pioneering editor and foreign reporter Margaret Fuller. One of her first published pieces, which appeared in The Century in October 1888, was an essay in memory of Emma, which became the preface to The Poems of Emma Lazarus, published the following year. Lazarus began publishing her writing only after Emma’s death, when Josephine was in her forties. After the death of her parents and all of her siblings except her oldest sister, Sarah, Josephine cared for Sarah until Sarah’s death from pneumonia, succumbing herself ten days later. ![]() For years, she oversaw the management of family homes in New York and Newport, caring for her parents, her sisters, and, after the death of her sister Agnes, her two nieces. Lazarus’ home life centered on her family. The family summered in Newport, Rhode Island, and the Lazarus daughters were members of Julia Ward Beecher’s exclusive Town and Country Club, where members took turns presenting prepared discourses on a range of scientific and literary topics. Also like her sister, she was fluent in the major European languages and well educated in literature, music, and the arts. While little is known about Lazarus’ early schooling, like Emma she was educated at home by private tutors. These affiliations reflected both a proud Jewish heritage and the family’s secure position in the most sophisticated social circles of late nineteenth-century New York City. They were also members of the Union and Knickerbocker clubs, which Moses helped to found. Sephardim Jews who were members of Shearith Israel, New York’s prestigious Spanish and Portuguese synagogue. Africa, Italy, the Middle East and the Balkans. Both parents were Descendants of the Jews who lived in Spain and Portugal before the explusion of 1492 primarily Jews of N. Moses Lazarus was a successful sugar merchant who was able to retire young. Her parents, Moses and Esther (Nathan) Lazarus, were both descended from the first Jews to settle in the United States, refugees from Brazil who landed in New Amsterdam in 1654. Lazarus, the second of seven children, was raised in a home of wealth, culture, and privilege.
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