text: Emma Lazarus was Jewish Social Worker and writer. One of her best friends was Rose Hawthorne. They befriended each other after Rose lost her only child, a young boy. She and her husband eventually divorced after being separated for a long time.
  Emma worked in the NYC tenements focusing on the Russian Jewish immigrants. Rose helped out as well.
  Emma developed breast cancer but was not allowed to be in the hospital. At that time, cancer was considered worse than what many people in our day thought of AIDS ( and some may still fear.)
  After Emma died, Rose went on to establish the FREE cancer homes with her new order of nuns.
  I am not sure when she became Catholic. It was a major swerve for her and her family. Her father was Nathaniel Hawthorne, the great American writer from Bowdoin College And as a fyi - he changed the spelling of his family's last name because he was appalled that a relative of his  was a judge during the Salem Witch Trails.
  All of his short stories are good reads now!