Last Friday I was confirmed. My classmates and I all received a copy of your book at the end of the ceremony. I began to read the book, and now have read almost the whole book. When reading the chapter "Power of Prayer", I noticed that you mentioned the prayer "Modeh Ani". When I was still in Hebrew school, I learned that prayer and recited I everyday when I woke up, just as you did. But now I have forgotten it, and would like to know it again.

Matthew Rieders (16 years old)

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I've been reading your book in spurts and really enjoying it. I teach Psalms at the Conservative Yeshiva so it is also helpful for my work. I hope to one day have time to review it perhaps in conjunction with another book about Psalms.....
Thanks for writing it!

Rabbi Gail Diamond
Assistant Director
Conservative Yeshiva of United Synagogue

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Dear Paul,
Yasher Koach on the book! I just finished reading it and found it, as you
said, filled with wonderful material for sermons and teachings. I
thoroughly enjoyed it.

Rabbi Daniel M. Wolpe
Southwest Orlando Jewish Congregation Temple Ohalei Rivka

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Of all the books in the Bible, it is the book of Psalms that best captures
the hopes and fears of ordinary human beings. Rabbi Plotkin's admirable
achievement is to relate these ancient texts to his life experience and
to ours so that they can address the hopes and fears of men and women and
today. Under his sensitive guiding hand, these texts acquire a powerful
sense of contemporaneity.

Dr. Neil Gillman, Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Jewish
Philosophy, Jewish Theological Seminary

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Dear Rabbi:
Just wanted to share with you how much I enjoyed reading your book. I loved the stories and your incredible insight into universal feelings, thoughts and relationships.
I particularly liked chapter 25 "G d, The Healer." It spoke to me as I am a true believer in mind, body, spirit.........

Best of luck to you and your family.

Sincerely,

Faye Masanoff

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Today, the day of the championship game, was a very emotional and spiritual day for me. By early afternoon, I had done errands, gone to the bookstore and purchased your new book, and prepared special Certificates of Excellence which I had purchased and printed up for the girls. After reading chapter one in your book, I started preparing special personal letters to each of the girls that I would give them along with their certificates. It was then that I realized why G d gave me this wonderful team to coach. It was then that I realized that whether we win or lose today, that we had already won. It was then and for the first time in my life that I recited the Amodeh ani, followed by the Shema, right there sitting on the floor preparing for the game. For the next few minutes, I just sat there on the floor and I recalled a very special little league team and a very special coach that I had long ago. I don=t remember what place we came in that year or where the trophy might have gone, but I do recall almost word for word what the personal letter he sent me said and how wonderful it made me feel after playing that season. I sealed all the letters that I had written to give to the kids and left my house for the game. By 8PM that night, we had won the championship. I looked out at the kids faces and once again I realized that we had already won. As I write this letter I sit here in tears, overcome with emotion and feeling a strong presence of G d around me. Thank you Rabbi for being part of my day. Thank you for chapter one. Tomorrow is a new day and chapter 2.

Dr. Cary Zinkin

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Uplifting and hopeful....that's how I would describe your book. I enjoyed it, and now Ethan will read it. I want you to know that your book made a big hit at last night's seder.......

Pam Kass

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Congratulations! Your recently published book, The Lord Is My Shepherd, Why Do I Still Want, spectacularly illustrates the universal principles embodied in Psalms and is a meaningful contemporary read. .......
I wish you much success with your fine book.

Yours truly,
Dr. Marc Swerdloff

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ARTICLE IN THE SUN SENTINEL NEWSPAPER - MAY 30TH, 2003

RABBI'S BOOK SHOWS PSALMS CAN SHEPHERD IN TOUGH TIMES

By James D. Davis Religion Editor

A haircutter in Australia gave Rabbi Paul Plotkin the title for his book.
Sitting in the chair in Melbourne, he discussed his book with her, and she remembered the first line of the 23rd Psalm -- "The Lord is my shepherd." But she didn't know the rest of the verse: "I shall not want."

That was an "aha" moment for Plotkin.

"It hit me -- everyone knows that line, but they're still dissatisfied with life because they don't get it," Plotkin said recently at Temple Beth Am in Margate. "They need to see that the Lord really is their shepherd."

Hence the title of his new book, The Lord is My Shepherd, Why Do I Still Want? (187 pp., $21.95), published by Sunbelt Eakin Press of Austin, Texas.

Plotkin, 53, describes his book as a combination of Chicken Soup for the Soul and All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. He uses stories, both his own and those of friends and congregants at Temple Beth Am, to illustrate the ancient wisdom of the Psalms.

Although he's a congregational rabbi, he hopes the book will help not just Jews, or even Christians, but people with no religious background.

"Every Psalm is representative of a human being, who went through change and resolved it, then left behind a nugget," Plotkin says.

The book was part therapy, part discipline. Plotkin wrote it largely during his sabbatical in 1998 and 1999, while studying in Australia and Israel. Locking himself in his study, he read the Psalms, took notes and reviewed his life, a life that had taken a downturn in recent years.

He realized that he had been reading songs of praise and gratitude for years without taking their message to heart. "It was time to show I believed them. Time to put up or shut up."

In dealing with death, anger, slander and other matters, the book offers several tasty insights from a seasoned life. He notes that the Hebrew word for life, chayim, literally means "lives," because Judaism recognizes that everyone needs to live in relationship with others.

Plotkin's idea of praising God may seem self-centered: as a way of changing perspective on one's own problems. But he insists: "That's one of the most important things. If you concentrate on the negatives, it leads to self- defeating conclusions."

He offers the example of a man at the Auschwitz death camp in the mid-1940s. "The man would have no knowledge of Israel, which would be a strong nation within 25 years. But to God, it would be a mere blink in time."

Plotkin takes a bold stand in writing a chapter on old age, a difficult topic in a youth-worshiping country.

"In this society, it's better to be a convicted felon than an old person," Plotkin says. "We've lost the sense that the Bible has, that age brings wisdom. We see older persons as irrelevant and incoherent. But that's going to change as Baby Boomers age."

He tackles parenting from a different angle -- on how to deal with parents, rather than how to raise children. Among those issues are abandonment, which he said is more prevalent than most people might think.

"Parental abandonment can take different forms, like withholding love," Plotkin says.

Perspective is also behind Plotkin's view of so-called geeks and nerds, a concept he manages to find in the Bible. In Psalm 119, he sees many echoes of social outcasts: "How can a young man keep his way pure? By holding to your Word. ... Take me away from taunt and abuse ... the arrogant have cruelly mocked me."

"Remember high school days? The relationships, the friends, the issues, the betrayals, the yearnings? We're constantly reliving those days. But the lesson of the Psalms is that what's important isn't really important."

Among the surprises in Plotkin's book is his argument that angels are real, not a metaphor or picture. "They are concrete," he says in his book.

Reactions have already started coming in since the book came out in April, face to face and over his www.mypsalms.net Web site.

"I go to bed with your book and my husband every night [not necessarily in that order]," one reader wrote whimsically.

He says more than 50 people attended his book signing at Borders bookstore in Coral Springs on May 21.

Other signings are lined up at 2 p.m. June 24 at Barnes & Noble in Boynton Beach, and at 8 p.m. Aug. 20 at Books & Books in Coral Gables.

One admiring comment came from Rabbi Gail Diamond in Israel. She wrote that she uses the book to teach Psalms, at the Conservative Yeshiva of United Synagogue, where she is the assistant director.

Still another reader said she gave a copy to a non-Jewish friend, who read parts of it to a sick brother.

Even the United Methodist-aligned Cokesbury bookstore chain has expressed an interest in Plotkin's book.

Plotkin also treasures a comment from a librarian at the Library of Congress.

"It was moving to me," he said of Plotkin's book, after going through his own divorce.

"People have used the book to deal with all sorts of issues in their lives," Plotkin says. "It shows the universality of the Psalms."

James D. Davis can be reached at jdavis@sun-sentinel.com.