Keeping faith with the Psalms Deepen your relationship with God using the book of Psalms

With the Book of Psalms as a guide, Polish offers Jewish readers a workbook to construct their personal theology. In this sequel to Bringing the Psalms to Life, Polish presents the Psalms as a resource to refine an understanding of God and to shape a religious worldview. "Psalms is more like our own faith experience than other books of the Bible," he posits. "Belief is not `steady-state': unwavering and unchanging." The Book of Psalms, he says, often talks in "questioning tones rather than in terms of certainty." Quoting generously from the Psalms, Polish applies their wisdom to perplexing religious questions: How do we know God? What makes a life righteous? How do we deal with mortality? The idea of an afterlife? The book is divided into three parts: the quest for God in nature, Torah and history; the quest for insight in grappling with dilemmas like the problem of evil; the quest for commitment in living a life of faith, through acts of social justice and devotion to Jerusalem. Each chapter opens with a Yiddish poem (translated into English) that evokes that chapter's theme. Though readers might not regard questions of faith as "intimate and immediate" issues like those that arise from personal crises, they are "every bit as compelling and fundamental to our lives," says Polish. This is a book to peruse not lightly but with great concentration if the texts are to offer messages for our lives. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In Bringing the Psalms to Life: How To Understand and Use the Book of Psalms, Rabbi Polish (Ph.D., Harvard) analyzed the Book of Psalms and explained why generations of people have turned to it for comfort and inspiration. In his new book, he addresses the beliefs that make up our personal theology: our quest for God and a personal relationship with Him, our quest for an understanding of evil in the world and our own mortality, and our quest for social justice. He then explores what the Book of Psalms can contribute to those quests. Introducing each chapter with an eloquent Yiddish poem that evokes the theme of the chapter in a moving and contemporary way, he quotes heavily from the psalms as he points out the "facets of truth, aspects of answers, glimmers of deep understanding" that the psalms can provide. While there are other good explications of this seminal book in Judeo-Christian theology, this is a particularly worthwhile addition to public and church/synagogue collections.-Marcia Welsh, Dartmouth Coll., Hanover, NH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.