Introduction & Overview of But Perhaps God Needs the Longing by Nelly Sachs

But Perhaps God Needs the Longing Introduction

When Nelly Sachs first began to write, she wrote of the longing for a lover and of the disappointment of lost love. After her experiences during the Holocaust, most of Sachs's poems dealt with the destruction of European Jewry. She used her poems to express the deep sense of loss and grief that she felt and as a form of catharsis for the many emotions that she had experienced during the war years. Although Sachs escaped the death camps, her escape did not leave her immune to the suffering of those Jews who were transported. Although she had been brought up in a non-religious, secular household, the experience of the Holocaust deepened Sachs's commitment to Judaism. Many of her poems, written after the war, reflect this deepened commitment to religion. This is certainly the case with "But Perhaps God Needs the Longing," (first printed in 1966 in Die Suchende) a...
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