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Emma Lazarus' poetry on Jewish themes is inspiring and challenging for her vision of what was valuable in her heritage and for her efforts to contribute, in a distinctivly Jewish voice to American secularism. She celebrates Jewish thinkers and poets such as Maimonides, Ibn Gabirol, and Spinoza. The Civil War was an impetus to much of her writing, and early poems such as 'The Day of Dead Soldiers', 'Heroe's' and 'The South' are meditations on the meaning of the war and on its aftermath. Other early poems such as 'Niagra', 'Long Island Sound' and an untitled sonnet on Mount Khatadin celebrate the United States' unique geography.
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