The Book of Miracles: A Young Person's Guide to Jewish Spiritual Awareness : For Parents to Read to Their Children, for Children to Read to Their Pa

Essays presenting the elements of Jewish spiritual thinking.

The Book of Miracles: A Young Person's Guide to Jewish Spiritual Awareness brings Lawrence Kushner's funny, warm, smart perspective on Judaism to young readers. (This book will be most popular among kids ages 9 to 13.) Kushner's chapters on "Seeing," "Hearing," and "Doing" tell stories based on the Hebrew Scriptures in a style that is perfect for bedtime reading. "To be a Jew means to wake up and to keep your eyes open to the many beautiful, mysterious, and holy things that happen all around us every day," Kushner writes. "Many of them are like little miracles: when we wake up and see the morning light, when we taste food and grow strong, when we learn from others and grow wise, when we hug the people we love and feel warm." Kushner's goal in The Book of Miracles is to help children learn to ask good questions about spirituality by speaking directly to their concrete way of thinking and their voracious curiosity. The spiritual goal that Kushner guides children to assume is one that many adults will take for themselves as well. "The goal of spirituality is the bringing together of seeing, hearing, and doing into one whole person," he writes. "It is to see yourself mirrored in the heavens above and to realize that the Holy One created you personally to help complete the work of repairing the world." --Michael Joseph Gross