Born in Ukraine in 1914, Zelda was the daughter Rabbi Sholom Shlomo and Rachel Schneurson. Her father was a brother of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, father of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, making Zelda first cousins with the Rebbe.
Zelda’s mother Rachel, was the daughter of a distinguished Chasid, Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Chen, who also descended from a long line of Chabad rabbis. In 1928, she immigrated with her family to Israel. Her father died shortly afterwards. In 1950, at age 36, she married Chayim Aryeh Mishkovsky.
Zelda: Remembering an Israeli Poet
Among the poets in Israel’s literary circles, many quietly remembered Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky on Tuesday (April 21) 27 Nissan. That Zelda, as she was simply called, died (in 1984) on the same day designated by the state of Israel as Holocaust Remembrance day, is in itself poetic; her poetry, for which she received the Bialik and Brenner Prizes in literature, speaks of death and darkness but also of renewal and transcendence.
Born in Ukraine in 1914, Zelda was the daughter Rabbi Sholom Shlomo and Rachel Schneurson. Her father was a brother of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, father of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, making Zelda first cousins with the Rebbe.
Zelda’s mother Rachel, was the daughter of a distinguished Chasid, Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Chen, who also descended from a long line of Chabad rabbis. In 1928, she immigrated with her family to Israel. Her father died shortly afterwards. In 1950, at age 36, she married Chayim Aryeh Mishkovsky.
Zelda’s students, translators and critics of her work discerned influences of her Chasidic background in her poetry. Indeed, one reviewer described her work as “a poetic expression of the tenets of Chabad, to which the poet was linked by family ties and spiritual leanings.”
Her poems, all in Hebrew and now widely translated in numerous languages, are filtered through a uniquely Chabad spiritual perspective that manages to startle readers—no matter their orientation. Contemplative as they are, they shatter fixed ideas yet find their footing at the kitchen table, making her—poet, woman, Chasidic Jew–an anomaly both within and outside of the literary world.
In her introduction to The Spectacular Difference (HUC PRESS), Marcia Falk, author and translator of Zelda’s poems recalls her first visit to the author’s Jerusalem home in the 1970s:
“I showed up at her doorstep in a knee-length skirt and a sleeveless blouse, a kerchief on my head. I had debated with myself about the skirt and blouse, knowing that the very religious do not approve of women revealing bare arms or legs; but the heat was oppressive that day and I had heard that Zelda was tolerant by nature. I didn’t give a thought about the kerchief, which looked, I later realized like the traditional tikhl worn by some Orthodox married women to cover their hair in public. I had worn it only as protection from the beating sun.
