My Father's Hands Spoke in Yiddish' is a powerful collection. Karen Shenfeld's poems are filled with passionate sensuality, triggered by dazzling memories of people and places. There are short lyric poems that focus on a specific symbol to take on larger meanings, and narrative works in which the poet contemplates the Holocaust using the specifics of everyday, named objects. From Shenfeld's controlled intelligence comes an honest recollection of the past, imbued with an expansive hopefulness.