What happens when Emma Lazarus' The New Colossus is no longer read as the civic creed,

but as a provocation about who belongs and what a democracy owes the vulnerable?

In this sponsored episode of Identity Crisis, Yehuda Kertzer reflects on what he sees as the normalization of cruelty toward immigrants in America,

the present state violence being carried out in Minneapolis, and the uneasy silence of

Jewish institutions when civil rights are clearly under assault. He then turns his lens

toward Israel, asking what it means for Jews in both democracies

to draw the line not between us and them, but between cruelty and compassion.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Identity Crisis, a show from the Shalom-Hartman Institute creating better conversations about the essential issues facing Jewish life.

I'm Ehudurter-Hurz. We're recording on Sunday, February 1st, 2026 from Jerusalem.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land,

here at our sea-washed sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch whose flame

is the imprisoned lightning, and her name, Mother of Exiles.

From her beacon hand glows worldwide welcome, her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that Twin Cities frame.

Keep ancient lands your storied pomp, cries she, with silent lips.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

This is a poem written by a Jewish poet, part of an effort to raise funds for a giant statue in New York Harbor.

A poem she only agreed to write because she was persuaded it would be a welcoming symbol to the immigrants that she was actively involved in trying to support.

The poem is an American symbol, an image and a story that is part of the

canonical story that America has told about itself on and off, sometimes contested, but still

deeply part of the landscape. It's a Jewish symbol, too, not just the product of a Jewish author,

but as a reflection of the American Jewish

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