It is often attributed to Maya Angelou, who said it as "The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free."
But Angelou got it from Emma Lazarus, the Jew who also wrote the "Give me your tired, your poor..." quote on the Statue of Liberty.
It is not well known but towards the end of her short life, Lazarus became a Zionist - before Herzl - and an ardent opponent of antisemitism. She founded a society to help oppressed Jews in Eastern Europe to go to the Land of Israel.
In defiance of the hostile construction that may be put upon my words, I do not hesitate to say that our national defect is that we are not "tribal" enough; we have not sufficient solidarity to perceive that when the life and property of a Jew in the uttermost provinces of the Caucuses are attacked, the dignity of a Jew in free America is humiliated. We who are prosperous and independent have not sufficient homogeneity to champion on the ground of a common creed, common stock, a common history, a common heritage of misfortune, the rights of the lowest and poorest Jew-peddler who flees, for life and liberty of thought, from Slavonic mobs. Until we are all free, we are none of us free. But lest we should justify the taunts of our opponents, lest we should become "tribal" and narrow and Judaic rather than humane and cosmopolitan like the anti-Semites of Germany and Jew-baiters of Russia, we ignore and repudiate our unhappy brethren as having no part or share in their misfortunes- until the cup of anguish is held also to our own lips.
Lazarus used the phrase to refer to Jews in America who she felt were not adequately concerned about the oppression of their fellow Jews in Eastern Europe. She felt Jews should become more tribal, more concerned about each other, prioritizing the wellbeing of our fellow Jews anywhere in the world over universal principles that antisemites and Jew call "humane and cosmopolitan."
Lazarus warns that if we ignore the plight of our fellow Jews around the world, we will eventually drink from their same cup of anguish.
Her message is the opposite of how the phrase is understood now. It is not universal but narrow. She is saying to Jews what Benjamin Franklin probably didn't say, "We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately,"
Lazarus, if she was alive today, would be aghast at the American Jews who embrace Israel's enemies in the name of "human rights" - the same self-deception that the racial antisemites of the 19th century used in pretending to be upholding moral standards. Lazarus would use this phrase not to refer to Palestinians but to Jews being held hostage by Hamas and those kept homeless in the north under Hezbollah fire, today's equivalent of the "poorest Jew-peddler."
Emma Lazarus is a hero today among progressives who have erased her Judaism to turn it into a universal, watered down message. Perhaps they should read what she really said.
