Putting God on the Guest List, Third Edition: How to Reclaim the Spiritual Meaning of Your Child's Bar or Bat Mitzvah

PMA Best Religion Book of the Year!
The inspiring guide to spiritual celebration used in hundreds of congregations―Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist―revised and expanded!

"Parents and their children acutely feel the social pressures that surround bar and bat mitzvah. But they want to feel the spiritual promise of the event, the pull of the divine, and the knowledge that they are participating in an event that has meaning both in the ancient past and in the very immediate present. They want to know that the steep incline before them is their family's own version of Sinai, the summit where, in every generation, Jews meet God, individually and as a people. They want to know that bar and bat mitzvah can be a path to that summit. And they want to know how to get there. . . . This book can be their guide."
―from "Why This Book Was Born"

Helps people find core spiritual values in American Jewry's most misunderstood ceremony―bar and bat mitzvah. In a joining of explanation, instruction and inspiration, Rabbi Salkin helps both parent and child truly be there when the moment of Sinai is recreated in their lives.

Rabbi Salkin asks and answers questions that make parents and children more comfortable with the event and able to experience it more joyfully. How did bar and bat mitzvah originate? What is the lasting significance of the event? What are the ethics of celebration? What specific things can you do to reclaim the spiritual meaning of the event? How to further develop spirituality? What spiritual values can parents and young people build together?

To help guide friends and family who are not Jewish through this important Jewish life cycle event, Rabbi Salkin provides a brief, welcoming overview: "What Non-Jews Should Know About the Bar and Bat Mitzvah Service."

Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin is recognized as one of the most thoughtful Jewish writers and teachers of his generation. He has helped people of all ages find spiritual meaning in both the great and small moments in life.

A noted author whose work has appeared in many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Reader's Digest and the Congressional Record, Rabbi Salkin is editor of The Modern Men's Torah Commentary: New Insights from Jewish Men on the 54 Weekly Torah PortionsandText Messages: A Torah Commentary for Teens; and author of Being God's Partner: How to Find the Hidden Link Between Spirituality and Your Work, with an introduction by Norman Lear; the best-seller Putting God on the Guest List: How to Reclaim the Spiritual Meaning of Your Child's Bar or Bat Mitzvah; For Kids―Putting God on Your Guest List: How to Claim the Spiritual Meaning of Your Bar or Bat Mitzvah and Righteous Gentiles in the Hebrew Bible: Ancient Role Models for Sacred Relationships (all Jewish Lights), among other books. 


Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, a parent, spiritual leader and storyteller, is the award-winning author of God's Paintbrush, In God's Name, God In Between and many other inspiring books for children of all faiths and backgrounds. The second woman to be ordained as a rabbi (1974) and the first rabbi to become a mother, she and her husband, Dennis, were the first rabbinical couple to jointly lead a congregation―Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis. They have two children, David and Debora, and three grandchildren. Sasso, who holds a doctorate in ministry, is active in the interfaith community, and has written and lectured on the renewal of spirituality and the discovery of the religious imagination in children of all faiths.

Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso is available to speak on the following topics:

• Nurturing the Spiritual Imagination of Children
• Tell Me a Story: Reading the Bible and the Religious Imagination of Children
• Filling in the Blanks: How Women Read the Bible
• Women and Judaism: A Personal Journey
• Midrash as a Tool for Spiritual Reflection

Click here to contact the author.

Rabbi William H. Lebeau is vice chancellor and chairman of the Department of Professional Skills and dean of the Rabbinical School at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He was a congregational rabbi for nearly twenty-five years.