Putting Faith in Words

Over the years, Jewish fathers and mothers kept asking Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso how to teach their children about God. The rabbi pulled out a pen and legal pad and got to work. Five books later, her religious stories for children have moved beyond Jewish nursery shelves and synagogue libraries and into Protestant Sunday schools and Roman Catholic bestseller lists. All because Sasso answers the hard questions in ways that anyone can understand.

She wrote her latest book, “In God’s Name,” because so many children asked her, “Who is God?” and “What is God’s name?”

“No one knew the name for God,” the story begins, “so each person searched.”

The characters in this tale are modern searchers who choose names from Hebrew Scripture but relate them to their own lives.

“The woman who cared for the sick called God ‘Healer,’ ” Sasso writes. “The young woman who nursed her newborn son called God ‘Mother.’

“The farmer whose skin was dark like the rich brown earth from which all things grew called God ‘Source of Life.’ The artist who carved figures from hard stone called God ‘My Rock.’ ”

“We’ve shied away from conversations about God with our children, because we think religion is an adult concern,” Sasso says. “Children have a very active religious imagination. They ask the same questions as adults. It’s the grown-ups who are uncomfortable with this, not the children.”

In 1974, Sasso, 51, became the second American woman to be ordained a rabbi. She and her husband, Rabbi Dennis Sasso, oversee Temple Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis. She wrote her first book, “God’s Paintbrush,” during a course she took on religion and children. Six years later she finally found a publisher, Jewish Lights, the Vermont house that has published all her books. All have won various prizes in the children’s literature category. “Paintbrush” is in its seventh printing, with 60,000 copies sold.

Sasso says adults tell her that her children’s books have helped them master complex theology. Some of the questions she takes up come from heady philosophical texts. “The God in Between” is Sasso’s take on “I and Thou” by German philosopher Martin Buber. It tells the story of a town’s quest for the place where God lives.

“Before I write I have to think deeply about what I truly believe and explain it in simple, concrete language,” she says. “With children, you have to be perfectly clear. If you talk about God as a spirit, they think you mean a ghost. I try to give them a language to talk about what they haven’t had the words to express.”

Before she reads one of her books aloud to children, she asks what name they use for God. “Father” or “Lord” is the answer. After she reads, she asks again. This time, the answers change to “Friend” or “Mother.”

“It says something about the children’s own experiences,” Sasso says. “We all come to know God in different ways.”

In Hawaii, the Rev. Donald Schmidt, who edits a Sunday school study program used by 12,000 Protestant congregations worldwide, recommends Sasso’s books and uses them in Sunday services at his own United Church of Christ.

If he reads a Sasso book, he tells the children that the author is Jewish.

“That’s not what throws them,” Schmidt says. “The big surprise is that she’s a woman. They think a rabbi should be an old bearded man.”

At the Whizin Institute for Jewish Family Life of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, parents and grandparents get trained in the techniques for reading to children at home. Ron Wolfson, the institute’s director, has helped set up similar reading programs in schools and synagogues around the country.

“Good Jewish books supply a script for adults unsure of what to say,” Wolfson finds. “A lot of parents and grandparents are uncomfortable talking about God.”

Rita Berman Frischer, director of library services for the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, often reads to students from the synagogue’s day school, Sinai Akiba Academy. Lately, she sees more children’s books that approach Jewish subjects in the way that Sasso does.

“They’re books that are not heavily geared to one religion,” Frischer says.

A large part of the crossover audience for these books includes unaffiliated Jews who respect their religious traditions but do not belong to a synagogue. Sasso writes for them as well as the most active members of the temple.

“It doesn’t mean we don’t value our Jewish tradition,” Sasso says of her wide-lens vision of God. “But all religious traditions need to be respected. That was the victory of Hanukkah. The Israelites wanted the freedom to practice their own religious tradition, not one imposed on them. And they held out for that right. The God of Hanukkah is the God of freedom.”