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My brother was only five years old // Adonai
our mother taught him // to love You
that You // would not let him stumble //
would not let him fall
Out of the horror of the abyss, the narrow places of his family's history, Menachem Rosensaft has written a Book of Psalms that laments, accuses, rages, weeps and yet, somehow, still addresses God. The son of two Auschwitz survivors, Rosensaft imagines the voice of his older brother, Benjamin, who perished in the gas chambers before Menachem was born. His 150 psalms are masterful recreations of the original texts, turning praise into dirges, festivals into mourning - until subtly suggesting a hint of comfort through the mere fact of their existence.
A legal scholar by trade, the author has published multiple works that combine memoir, poetry and Holocaust remembrances. In these pages, responding to all 150 Psalms individually, the author balances his mastery of Jewish theology with a raw writing style that is unafraid to question, lash out at and lament God's seeming passivity in the face of evil. ... A haunting reimagining of the Book of Psalms.
-Kirkus Reviews
These searching, unflinching new psalms express an agonizing crisis of faith as Rosensaft, like the original psalmist, addresses his god directly, but in agony and expecting silence in response. ... The hauntingly sparse poetic style is as contemporary as the key question is ancient: How could a compassionate god permit the chosen people to face such darkness? ... Searing lamentations on divine silence and abandonment during Holocaust.
-Booklife
Like the Book of Psalms of the Bible, Menachem Rosensaft's psalms speak for our souls. With a gift for expressing even the most hidden thoughts and feelings, his psalms give voice to the horrors and trauma that haunt children of Holocaust victims and survivors. Burning Psalms is one of the most powerful Jewish expressions of our day.
-Susannah Heschel, PhD., Eli M. Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College
In every generation, the Biblical Psalms have provided humanity with a theological lexicon for the challenges and opportunities that come with standing in God's presence. In this extraordinary volume, Menachem Rosensaft - poet, advocate for humanity and child of Holocaust survivors - has recast the sacred poetry of the past into a vade mecum for those presently seeking meaning in the extended shadow of the Shoah. Faithful both to the text and the burning questions that sit on our broken hearts, Rosensaft has elegantly and audaciously provided his readers a pathway to pursue justice, find comfort and continue to seek beauty in this world.
-Rabbi Elliot J. Cosgrove, Ph.D., Senior Rabbi, Park Avenue Synagogue; author, For Such a Time as This: On Being Jewish Today
Menachem Rosensaft's evocative, heartfelt work is among of the most informed and gut-wrenching attempts to understand belief and comfort in the Divine in the shadow of the Holocaust. More than that, it is a strong and compelling reminder that understanding the Shoah and its legacies requires knowledge of the history and openness to the psychological and emotional resonance of such immense loss. Rosensaft accomplishes both with remarkable skill, helping us all to understand and to speak the 'unvarnished painful truth' (Burning Psalm 78) of the Shoah and its relevance to our lives today.
-Robert J. Williams, PhD., Finci-Viterbi Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation; UNESCO Chair on Antisemitism and Holocaust Research
A Powerful, Life-Affirming New Perspective on the Holocaust
Almost ninety children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors--theologians, scholars, spiritual leaders, authors, artists, political and community leaders and media personalities--from sixteen countries on six continents reflect on how the memories transmitted to them have affected their lives. Profoundly personal stories explore faith, identity and legacy in the aftermath of the Holocaust as well as our role in ensuring that future genocides and similar atrocities never happen again.
There have been many books and studies about children of Holocaust survivors--the so-called second and third generations--with a psycho-social focus. This book is different. It is intended to reflect what they believe, who they are and how that informs what they have done and are doing with their lives.
From major religious or intellectual explorations to shorter commentaries on experiences, quandaries and cultural, political and personal affirmations, almost ninety contributors from sixteen countries respond to this question: how have your parents' and grandparents' experiences and examples helped shape your identity and your attitudes toward God, faith, Judaism, the Jewish people and the world as a whole?
For people of all faiths and backgrounds, these powerful and deeply moving statements will have a profound effect on the way our and future generations understand and shape their understanding of the Holocaust.
Praise from Pope Francis for Menachem Rosensaft's essay reconciling God's presence with the horrors of the Holocaust:
When you, with humility, are telling us where God was in that moment, I felt within me that you had transcended all possible explanations and that, after a long pilgrimage--sometimes sad, tedious or dull--you came to discover a certain logic and it is from there that you were speaking to us; the logic of First Kings 19:12, the logic of that 'gentle breeze' (I know that it is a very poor translation of the rich Hebrew expression) that constitutes the only possible hermeneutic interpretation.
Thank you from my heart. And, please, do not forget to pray for me. May the Lord bless you.
--His Holiness Pope Francis
Contributors:
Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella of the Supreme Court of Canada
Historian Ilya Altman, cofounder and cochairman, Russian Research and Educational Holocaust Center, Moscow
New York Times reporter and author Joseph Berger, New York
Historian Eleonora Bergman, former director, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw
Vivian Glaser Bernstein, former cochief, Group Programmes Unit, United Nations Department of Public Information, New York
Michael Brenner, professor of Jewish history and culture, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich; chair in Israel studies, American University, Washington, DC
Novelist and poet Lily Brett, winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Award, New York
New York Times deputy national news editor and former Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner, New York
Stephanie Butnick, associate editor, Tablet Magazine, New York
Rabbi Chaim Zev Citron, Ahavas Yisroel Synagogue and Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon Chabad, Los Angeles
Dr. Stephen L. Comite, assistant clinical professor of dermatology, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York
Elaine Culbertson, director of a program taking American high school teachers to study Holocaust sites, New York
Former Israeli Minister of Internal Security and Shin Bet director Avi Dichter, Israel
Lawrence S. Elbaum, attorney, New York
Alexis Fishman, Australian actor and singer
Shimon Koffler Fogel, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Ottawa
Dr. Eva Fogelman, psychologist and author, New York
Associate Judge Karen Chaya Friedman of the Circuit Court of Maryland
Natalie Friedman, dean of studies and senior class dean, Barnard College, New York
Michael W. Grunberger, director of collections, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
David Harris, executive director, American Jewish Committee, New York
Author Eva Hoffman, recipient of the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, London
Rabbi Abie Ingber, executive director, Center for Interfaith Community Engagement, Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH
Josef Joffe, editor-publisher, Die Zeit, Germany
Rabbi Lody B. van de Kamp, author; former member of the Chief Rabbinate of Holland and the Conference of European Rabbis, Holland
Rabbi Lilly Kaufman, Torah Fund director, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York
Filmmaker Aviva Kempner, Washington, DC
Cardiologist Dr. David N. Kenigsberg, Plantation, FL
Author and Shalom Hartman Institute fellow Yossi Klein Halevi, Israel
Attorney Faina Kukliansky, chairperson, Jewish Community of Lithuania, Vilnius
Rabbi Benny Lau, Ramban Synagogue, Jerusalem
Amichai Lau-Lavie, founding director, Storahtelling, Israel/New York
Philanthropist Jeanette Lerman- Neubauer, Philadelphia
Hariete Levy, insurance actuary, Paris
Annette Lévy-Willard, journalist and author, Paris
Rabbi Mordec
About the AuthorMenachem Z. Rosensaft is the associate executive vice president and general counsel of the World Jewish Congress and teaches about the law of genocide at Columbia Law School and Cornell Law School. In addition to a law degree from Columbia Law School and a master's degree in modern European history from Columbia University, he received a master's degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University. He is the editor of God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2015).
***Through his haunting poems, my friend Menachem Rosensaft transports us into the forbidding universe of the Holocaust. Without pathos and eschewing the maudlin clichés that have become far too commonplace, he conveys with simultaneous sensitivity and bluntness the absolute sense of loss, deep-rooted anger directed at God and at humankind, and often cynical realism. His penetrating words are rooted in the knowledge that much of the world has failed to internalize the lessons of the most far-reaching genocide in history. The son of two survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, Menachem, brings us face to face with his five-and-a-half-year-old brother as he is separated from their mother and murdered in a Birkenau gas chamber. He then allows us to identify with the ghosts of other children who met the same tragic fate. Poems Born in Bergen-Belsen deserves a prominent place in Holocaust literature and belongs in the library of everyone who seeks to connect with what Elie Wiesel called the kingdom of night.
Ronald S. Lauder, President, World Jewish Congress.
Ever since he was a college student and in the many decades since Menachem Rosensaft has been raising difficult questions. He has rarely if ever, turned away from a fight when truth and justice were at stake. That same honesty, conviction, and forthrightness are evident in these compelling poems. His passion about the horrors of genocide, prejudice, and hatred leaves the reader unsettled. And that is how it should be.
Deborah Lipstadt, Ph.D., Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies, Emory University.
Menachem Rosensaft's luminous poetry confirms that he is not only one of the most fearless chroniclers of our factual, hard history, but also a treasured narrator of our emotional inheritance. Each of his poems is a jewel of economy, memory, and pathos, and each is a crystallized snapshot of the strained times we are living in, as well as the past moments we wish we could unlive. Share this collection with the people you care about.
Abigail Pogrebin, author of My Jewish Year 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew
