Can Jews have the longing and radiance of Shabes in their lives without strictly observing the Sabbath or does such radiance come only with a pious life?  Come read the poems of Peretz Markish, Yankev Glatshteyn, Alexander Shpiglblat and Rashel Veprinski to see how they wrestled with this question. Dr. Sheva Zucker is the academic director of the Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture, currently under the auspices of Bard College and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the executive director of the League for Yiddish and the editor of its magazine Afn Shvel. She is the author of Yiddish textbooks and producer of the CD The Golden Peacock: Voice of the Yiddish Writer. Her research and translations focus mostly on women in Yiddish literature. 

In 1922 the Soviet Yiddish poet Peretz Markish wrote, “Has anyone straying out there/Encountered my radiant Sabbath?” If Markish, living in a somewhat repressive Soviet regime, could write of longing for the Sabbath and its radiance no surprise that many Jewish poets dealt with the same theme. Can Jews have that radiance in their lives without strictly observing the Sabbath or does such radiance come only with a pious life? Come read the poems of Peretz Markish, Yankev Glatshteyn, Alexander Shpiglblat and Rashel Veprinski to see how they wrestled with this question.

Dr. Sheva Zucker has taught and lectured on Yiddish language, literature and culture on five continents. She is the academic director of the Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture, currently under the auspices of Bard College and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and has taught Yiddish for many years in the program. She is also the executive director of the League for Yiddish and the editor of its magazine Afn Shvel. She is the author of the textbooks Yiddish: An Introduction to the Language, Literature & Culture, Vols. I & II and the editor and producer of the CD The Golden Peacock: Voice of the Yiddish Writer. Her research and translations focus mostly on women in Yiddish literature. She was, for several years, the Translation Editor of the Pakn Treger, the magazine of the National Yiddish Book Center.