The Song of Shabbes
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In "The Song of Shabbes," Kadia Molodowsky crafts a profound meditation on the Sabbath's power to transform mundane existence into sacred experience. The 1965 Yiddish poem, published in *Likht fun Domboim* and translated by Rabbi Emanuel S. Goldsmith, portrays weekday life as a metaphorical battlefield where "six kings" wage war against spiritual vitality. Through close textual analysis, distinctive symbolic elements emerge: the weekdays systematically strip away sleep, salt, bread, and ultimately slaughter a dove—representations of physical and spiritual depletion. The poem's structure traces a journey from conflict to redemption, with the kindling of Sabbath candles serving as the pivotal moment of transformation. As the narrative unfolds, Molodowsky reveals how Sabbath observance not only restores what the week has taken but elevates the entire natural world into a sanctified state. The analysis demonstrates how the poem captures a fundamental aspect of Jewish spiritual life: the weekly cycle of depletion and renewal, where sacred time revolutionizes consciousness and redeems ordinary existence.

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Published 1967
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Kadia Molodowsky