The use of Yiddish today is a learned skill and the grasp of any literary text is at best tenuous. Books generations-old may also be unfortunately and unfairly judged within contemporary parameters of critique and literary studies. For many new dedicated Yiddish readers the burdens of "modern analysis" could set impossible obstacles in the understanding and enjoyment of these sonten in Yiddish. Berl Lapin painstakingly undertook the immense task of translating William Shakespeare's Sonnets into this Yiddish work of poetry. This Yiddish/English volume was awarded the National Poetry Prize by the Jewish Book Council.