Rabbi deals with life experiences in book on psalms

By FRANCES KRAFT - Staff Reporter Canadian Jewish News

Rabbi Paul Plotkin began a sabbatical in the fall of 1998 with the idea of re-nurturing himself, but the book he wrote that year offers spiritual sustenance for others, providing down-to-earth links between ancient psalms and modern-day issues. A Toronto native who served Congregation Beth Israel in Vancouver from 1976 to 1978 before settling in south Florida, the 53-year-old rabbi writes frankly in the book's introduction about his anguish over the end of his first marriage. That experience in 1994, and the dramatic difference one psalm made, became the catalyst for The Lord Is My Shepherd - Why Do I Still Want? (Sunbelt/Eakin Press). The recently published book (available online through www.amazon.ca or www.mypsalms.net, and locally, thus far, at Israel's Judaica Centre) was not written for a Jewish audience per se. "I felt the message transcended the Jewish base and could speak to people of all faiths and no faiths," said Rabbi Plotkin in a telephone interview from Margate, Fla., where he has been spiritual leader of Temple Beth Am for 20 years. On his sabbatical in Melbourne, Australia and Israel - accompanied by his wife Cheryl, a criminal attorney whom he married in 1996 - the rabbi spent each morning working on the book until he had gone through all 150 psalms. "I tried to find things I could relate to it." Although the writing was completed in a year, Rabbi Plotkin, the father of three grown children, says the book really took his whole life. "It was a way of pulling everything I had learned, developed and evolved to, into one place." One of the earliest experiences he writes about took place at the family cottage in Jackson's Point in 1966, when a younger acquaintance, also named Paul, was killed in a car accident. The rabbi's maternal grandmother, to whom the book is dedicated, had always reminded him to say Modeh Ani, the prayer to thank God for returning one's soul on awakening. That morning, having just learned of the accident, Rabbi Plotkin, then 16, was moved by the prayer in a profound way for the first time. Such moments are rare, even for rabbis, he admits. "We are as guilty as everybody else of allowing our prayers to become rote." On difficult days, he says, he allows himself a slower pace of davening. Reading a favourite line that speaks to him, calms or directs him is "like a booster shot." In The Lord Is My Shepherd, Rabbi Plotkin deals with issues including abandonment, old age, illness, death, loneliness, slander, and even geekiness, drawing on some of his own experiences at William Lyon Mackenzie Collegiate Institute, which he attended for two years. Teenagers swimming against the tide can relate to the psalmist who is "surrounded by the 'cool' people," he suggests. An alumnus of Associated Hebrew Day Schools, Rabbi Plotkin studied sociology at York University and received a master's degree in Judaica from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was ordained in 1976. As a youngster, he grew up in a traditional but not shomer Shabbat home, and spent much time at Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda Synagogue, where he was United Synagogue Youth (USY) president and later youth director. Every Saturday, he studied Talmud with Rabbi Joseph Kelman, now rabbi emeritus, at the rabbi's home. It was at Rabbi Kelman's suggestion that Rabbi Plotkin became observant around the time of his bar mitzvah, he recalls. His parents, Goldie and Isaac, supported his decision, with the understanding that he would also respect their lifestyle. His paternal grandfather, Chaim Plotkin, whom he recalls as "maybe 5'1" and larger than life," was a Lubavitcher shochet and mohel. (The family is not related to Rabbi Avraham Plotkin of Chabad Lubavitch of Markham.) Rabbi Plotkin realized as an undergraduate at York that everything he cared about was Jewish. He recalls "judaicizing" every paper he wrote, using Jewish themes and examples regardless of the subject. That was when the would-be lawyer changed course. On Beth Am's Web site, Rabbi Plotkin said the aspect of his work that makes him feel best is leaving someone in pain or crisis "with a smile on their face or a direction when they had none." Writing the book and hearing from people who've read it and giving it to friends dealing with personal crises, he says, has also been rewarding.