B’nai B’rith modernized its publications as new methods of photographic reproduction became available. The Menorah became B’nai B’rith News, in newspaper format with pictures, and then B’nai B’rith Magazine (International Jewish Monthly), illustrated with photos, in 1924. Its subscribers included non-Jews, who found these publications informative.

Over the years, B’nai B’rith journalists have written about the American Jewish novelist, translator, playwright and poet Emma Lazarus (1849-1887). Descended from the wealthy Seixas family, the assimilated Lazarus, whose early work reflected her love of Greek and German culture, would embrace entirely different subject matter after 1881, when she became an advocate for Jewish immigrants in New York. Dedicated to the new Statue of Liberty, Lazarus’ 1883 sonnet, “The New Colossus,” was acclaimed for giving voice to the downtrodden.

“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-tost,
to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The stories about Lazarus in B’nai B’rith publications explored aspects of her life and her poems, which still had the power to move those who wrote about them.

Reviewing an 1889 anthology of her verse, which should “certainly be in every Jewish home,” an anonymous Menorah writer reacted to Lazarus’ classical and Jewish-themed periods “as though written by two different authors.” The reviewer praises her poem, “The Banner of the Jew,” as “…linking the spirit of the Maccabees and the song of the prophets,” and goes on to make a personal statement about her demise: “To those who were fortunate to know her, any biographical sketch [is] inadequate to convey…her earnestness, her enthusiasm and her power.”

Paying tribute to Lazarus on the anniversary of her death in 1937, “After 50 Years,” by the prolific author Elma Ehlich Levinger focused on the relevance of her poetry for modern readers. Touching on Lazarus’ attitude toward her heritage, Levinger commented that: “…if Jewish suffering moved her, it is as though she felt the throb of sympathy every sensitive soul must feel at the woes of a romantic and alien people.” The poem “The Banner of the Jew” is quoted again:

“…With Moses’ law and David’s Lyre,
   Your ancient strength remains unbent,
Let but an Ezra rise anew,
To lift the Banner of the Jew!”

Levinger evoked the specter of the persecution and forced immigration of German Jews in her conclusion: “…the light she brought to her people, like the lamp in the hand of her Wandering Jew [a recurrent motif in her poetry] still burns on, our legacy and our hope.”

Celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty’s dedication, Bernard Postal’s 1966 “Miss Liberty and Miss Lazarus” shines the light on “The New Colossus.” He reports that Lazarus was reticent about contributing a poem for a souvenir book whose sales would fund the statute’s pedestal but complied only after a friend suggested she “think about the Goddess of Liberty holding the torch out to those Russian refugees you are so fond of visiting on Ward’s Island.” (Before Ellis Island, Jewish immigrants who were not allowed to land were held at this location.) He also notes that Lazarus, who was dying of cancer, was not invited to the statue’s dedication.

Postal ends his article by detailing the events of 1903, when the rediscovery of the long-forgotten poem in an old bookstore led to its physical connection with the monument. At that time, the “The New Colossus” was engraved on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty, where it can be seen today.