Burning Psalms : Confronting Adonai after Auschwitz

“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. . . . As the son of Holocaust survivors who was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany shortly after the war, Rosensaft writes from a place of deep-seated pain and generational trauma. . . . A haunting reimagining of the Book of Psalms.“

— Kirkus Reviews

It’s amazing that Menachem Z. Rosensaft’s “Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai after Auschwitz” doesn’t burst into flames. This book of poetry — every poem in it a response or counterpoint to every one of the psalms in the biblical book — written by the son of Holocaust survivors and the brother of a murdered sibling he never knew, is composed with fire, fueled by a combination of rage, love, and despite-it-all faith that sears your eyes as you read it.

—New Jersey Jewish Standard

Advance Praise for Burning Psalms

“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, Eli M. Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College

“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.”

—Robert J. Williams, Finci-Viterbi Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation; UNESCO Chair on Antisemitism and Holocaust Research

“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, Senior Rabbi, Park Avenue Synagogue; editor, For Such a Time as This: On Being Jewish Today

About the Author

Born in 1948 in the Displaced Persons camp of Bergen-Belsen in Germany, the son of two survivors of the Nazi death and concentration camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, Menachem Z. Rosensaft is adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School, lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School, general counsel emeritus of the World Jewish Congress, and a past president of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City. He is the author of Poems Born in Bergen-Belsen (Kelsay Books, 2021) and editor of God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2015) and Life Reborn, Jewish Displaced Persons 1945-1951 (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2001). In July 2023, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Tuzla in Bosnia and Herzegovina for his “contribution to raising awareness of the genocide against Bosnians in Srebrenica and the Holocaust, through the fight against the denial of crimes and the falsification of historical facts, and for contributing to peace building and the development of a culture of remembrance.”