Sephardic Jewish-American Literature
Diane Matza
Sephardic Jews have been in the United States for more than 350 years. In the early seventeenth century, the first arrivals were primarily Conversos, unwilling Spanish Jewish converts to Christianity, who practiced Judaic rituals secretly because they were hounded by the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal and who traveled widely, often settling in England, France, and Holland for periods of time and then moving on. The first such Jews came to America during the colonial period, as early as 1623. Primarily traders and entrepreneurs, commercial success characterized their early experiences in the colonies, often providing them entrée into mainstream American life; yet their very small community participated little in the shaping of American literary culture. The first Sephardic American writer, Penina Moise, was a poet known best in her own South Carolina community, and she was followed by the playwright Mordecai Manuel Noah, whose reputation as a statesman far outweighed his fame as a belletrist. By the late nineteenth century the Sephardic poet Emma Lazarus achieved true American stature when her poem "The New Colossus" appeared on the base of the Statue of Liberty. Her sister, Josephine Lazarus, also published belles lettres, and her other relations, Annie Nathan Meyer and Robert Nathan, became noted figures in the twentieth century, Meyer as a founder of Barnard College and a playwright and publicist and Nathan as one of the most prolific popular writers of his day. Yet another descendant of this family is Nancy Cardozo Cowles, a poet and biographer of Maud Gonne. Also possessing a long history on American soil is the contemporary writer Lawrence Perreira Spingarn, who
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