Page:The poems of Emma Lazarus volume 1.djvu/33

Rh guessed echoes. All this time she had been seeking heroic ideals in alien stock, soulless and far removed; in pagan mythology and mystic, mediseval Christianity, ignoring her very birthright, the majestic vista of the past, down which, &quot; high above flood and fire,&quot; had been conveyed the precious scroll of the Moral Law. Hitherto Judaism had been a dead letter to her. Of Portuguese descent, her family had always been members of the oldest and most orthodox congregation of New York, where strict adherence to custom and ceremonial was the watchword of faith; but it was only during her childhood and earliest years that she attended the synagogue, and conformed to the prescribed rites and usages which she had now long since abandoned as obsolete and having no bearing on modern life. Nor had she any great enthusiasm for her own people. As late as April, 1882, she published in &quot;The Century Magazine&quot; an article written probably some months before, entitled &quot; Was the Earl of Beaconsfield a Representative Jew? &quot; in which she is disposed to accept as the type of the modern Jew the brilliant, successful, but not over-scrupulous chevalier d’industrie. In view of subsequent, or rather contemporaneous events, the closing paragraph of the article in question is worthy of being cited:—

&quot; Thus far their religion [the Jewish], whose mere preservation under such adverse conditions seems little short