Rabbi turns to Psalms for solace
BY DONNA GEHRKE-WHITE of the Miami Herald
dgehrke@herald.com

She had lived a long, healthy life until she passed away at age 90. Yet her family was angry, even bitter.

Why would God, they kept asking, let her suffer so much in her last three months?

Rabbi Paul Plotkin of Temple Beth Am in Margate listened in disbelief. He calculated she had been healthy 99.72 percent of her life.

Shouldn't they be celebrating that?

He thought of Psalm 30 where the writer praises God for turning ''my lament into dancing.'' He thought of how other psalms comfort people by reminding them to be grateful -- and to help them realize that life offers peaks as well as valleys.

Now he has written a book, The Lord is My Shepherd: Why Do I Still Want? ($21.95, Sunbelt Eakin Press) about how the Book of Psalms can help people emerge stronger and happier from life's crises. On Thursday, the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, he'll speak about the comfort psalms offer, at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Fort Lauderdale.

''Sensitive and spiritual people have automatically turned to the healing nature of psalms,'' Plotkin said in an interview at his Beth Am office.

He knows firsthand.

Reeling from a divorce years ago, he sought the soothing psalms. He was, he says, depressed.

''You are so low in the valley that you don't think you will ever see a mountaintop,'' he said.

But Psalm 30 reminded him that God healed. One line reached out to him: ``Weeping may linger for the night but joy comes in the morning.''

It gave him hope that things would get better -- and they did. Plotkin, 53, is remarried to attorney Cheryl Kaplan.

He felt he was on to something when another rabbi, grappling with his own problem, quoted the same passage.

''It was then that I knew that I had to share the power of the Book of Psalms with everyone,'' Plotkin wrote in his book.

Psalms has been a popular Biblical book for centuries -- Martin Luther, who started the Reformation, memorized all 150 psalms.

Today, Psalms remains just as popular with Christians and Jews. Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, author of the bestseller When Bad Things Happen to Good People ($5.99, Mass Market Paperback), came out late last month with The Lord Is My Shepherd: The Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-Third Psalm ($19.99, Knopf).

Two years earlier, Christian writer and pastor Max Lucado also devoted an entire book to Psalm 23, perhaps the most loved of the psalms -- Traveling Light: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Intended to Bear ($21.99, W Publishing Co.).

Plotkin wants Christians and Jews to read his book about the psalms. In fact, the headquarters of United Methodist bookstores is including Plotkin's book in suggested titles for its affiliated stores to carry. Both Christians and Jews rely heavily on Psalms for liturgies and music.

Although Psalms is generally thought of as the work of King David, the rabbi said the reality is, many people wrote the verses over hundreds of years. They are, he said, ``Man speaking to God.''

Many of the writers were suffering, Plotkin said, and they queried God about what still concerns people today: Why do the selfish, uncaring prosper while the good suffer? How can a person recover after a tragedy? What is the purpose of life? Where was God when they needed Him?

The psalmists all resolved their problems, Plotkin said, ``because they were able to communicate with God and be healed.''

In their verses, the psalmists talk about traits that make people strong, such as gratitude, which psychologists are now discovering is a characteristic that helps people recover from a crisis or even depression.

The psalmists knew this thousands of years ago, Plotkin said.

''When we offer prayers of thanksgiving, we are teaching ourselves to appreciate,'' he wrote in his book. ``It is so easy to take for granted that which we have.''

Don't, he added in the book, ``take health or wealth or a good marriage for granted. Does it not follow that if I appreciate what I have and value it while I have it, I will not only enjoy it more, but I will invariably take better care of it?''

He said the psalmists also knew that steering away from a judgmental attitude keeps people healthier -- and happier.

``Let God be the judge of people's behavior. Let us be the bearers of comfort, solace and love.''