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.