The following is a text only transcript of Sandy Eisenberg  Sasso’s illustrated book, "Cain and Abel: Finding the Fruits of Peace." To purchase a copy of the original, richly illustrated book, please go to amazon.com . When you go to amazon.com from our website and make a purchase, a percentage of your purchase will be donated back  to "30 Good Minutes".  

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A very long time ago, when the world was new, many different kinds of fruit grew on each and every tree. Orapples, plumelons, and bananagerines ripened on a single branch. The smell of pinango, limeberry, and waterloupe sweetened the air.

Two children walked in God’s garden called Earth. One was named Cain, the other, Abel. They were the first children, the first brothers.

Cain and Abel loved the taste of orapples, plumelons, and bananagerines. They loved the smell of pinango, limeberry, and waterloupe. The earth was warm and soft, and fruit trees grew in abundance.

Each brother had a special job. Cain was the farmer. He loved to dig in the earth and harvest the vegetables and fruits. He knew how to take the wheat of the field, grind it into flour, and bake bread.

Abel was the shepherd. He liked to watch as his sheep grazed in the fields, and he gently guided the strays back to the flock. He would shear their wool and spin it into soft yarn to make blankets.

Cain’s hair was straight and coarse like straw from the grain he planted. Abel’s hair was soft and curly like the wool on the sheep he tended. Cain noticed that when he was alongside his brother, Abel reached only to his chin. Abel saw how large Cain’s hands were compared to his own.

But when they stood face to face, they saw that their eyes were the same color of chestnut. Every spring Cain and Abel marveled at the birth of lambs and the ripening of wheat.

In the cool of the evening, Cain wrapped himself in Abel’s wool and Abel dined on Cain’s vegetable stew. Late at night, wrapped in soft blankets and feasting on sweet plumelons, the brothers told each other their dreams.

One day Cain and Abel argued about whether it was better to be a farmer or a shepherd. Cain insisted that God loved the farmer best.

"After all, God planted the first garden," he declared.

Abel argued that God loved the shepherd best. "After all, God created the animals and watches over them," he insisted.

Cain and Abel prayed to God. When Cain prayed, he brought with him a large basket of ripened vegetables. When Abel prayed, he brought his very finest sheep.

Cain looked at his silent vegetables, shriveling up in the noon sun while Abel’s sheep bleated happily in the field. Cain was certain that God must like sheep better than vegetables. Maybe God did like the shepherd better than the farmer.

Cain glared at his brother. That night he didn’t cover himself with Abel’s blanket, and he didn’t tell Abel his dreams. The next day he didn’t share his vegetable stew with Abel. Abel did not understand why Cain was so angry at him.

At night, Cain thought about how everything seemed so easy for Abel. If it weren’t for his brother, he would be the favorite one. If it weren’t for Abel, he’d be happy. Just thinking about it made Cain’s face turn red like the beets he grew.

"I hate you, Abel!" he called out.

Hearing Cain’s words, Abel turned pale like sheep’s wool.

"I hate you too, Cain!" Abel shouted.

From then on, whenever Cain and Abel met in the field, they turned their faces away from each other. For weeks they could not look each other in the eye.

One hot morning Cain was clearing some heavy rocks from the ground. A sheep from Abel’s flock trampled on Cain’s newly planted field. Abel was lying in the shade of a nearby tree while his sheep grazed lazily. Cain tried to speak to Abel, but the words wouldn’t come.

Cain hated that his brother was resting while the sheep made a mess of all his hard work. Cain was so angry that he felt as if he were on fire inside. His heart was beating so strongly that he covered his ears to make the pounding stop, but it just got louder. He couldn’t even look at Abel anymore; he could only stare at the ground.

At that moment, Cain noticed a large rock sitting right by his feet. Without thinking, he lifted the rock and instead of tossing it aside as he always did, he threw it at Abel and hit him on the head.

Abel fell over and did not move. Cain called to him, but Abel did not answer. It was then that Cain knew he had killed his brother, Abel.

Cain wanted to run away, but his feet would not carry him and his hands trembled. The sky darkened.

Then Cain heard God’s voice calling to him, "Where is your brother?"

God’s voice was angry and sad.

Cain answered, "Am I my brother’s keeper?"

The rock that seemed so light a moment ago was heavy in Cain’s heart. The gash in Abel’s head appeared as a mark on Cain’s own.

Cain wished he could go back in time and take back his anger, take back the rock. He missed his brother; he felt ashamed. Abel would never grow up and have children.

It was as if Cain had destroyed an entire world.

The earth that had always felt warm and soft beneath his feet turned cold and hard. Where once fruits and flowers bloomed, now only thorns and thistles grew. Cain couldn’t farm anymore. He wandered from place to place looking for a home.

Winter came early that year and the trees wept leaves. All kinds of fruit fell before they ripened. Figterines, rasdew, and cantaberry covered the ground. No longer could different kinds of fruit remain on a single tree.

Time passed, a long time. The world was not new anymore. People built cities and made homes there. Yet people often spoke angry words. And with angry words they drew their swords. Swords turned to guns and guns to bombs.

One killing became two, two became four, and four became sixteen. Sixteen killings became war.

Entire worlds were destroyed.

Now no one remembers figterines, rasdew, and cantaberry. But the people keep telling the story of Cain and Abel, the first children. They sigh as they read of Cain picking up the rock. They want to hold back his hand and stop his anger from growing into hate.

Perhaps one day, when each person learns to reach out an open hand without the rock, without the sword, without the gun, the entire world can be saved.

Then many different kinds of fruit will once again grow on a single tree. The orapples will return, the banangerines will appear. And in God’s garden called Earth, all will be good.

Interview with Sandy Sasso
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Cain and Abel. What a powerful message for what we see going on in our world today. Tell us how you first were inspired to write the book.

Sandy Sasso: I was always fascinated by the story of Cain and Abel. It seemed to be dealing with the perennial issues: How do we respond when life is unfair? What do we do when we get angry? How do we react to situations where we feel resentful, when we feel that we are not the favored ones? So the story really resonated with me. I was seeing around me so much violence in schools and on the streets. I wondered if we could explore this story more deeply to help parents, children, teachers, and all of us, talk about anger. Anger is such a natural emotion. The question is, what do we do with that anger and how do we channel it constructively so it doesn’t grow into hate and then into violence which is, of course, what happens in this story.

Talbot: Violence such as in the Columbine High School incident and so many other examples in our country. However, you said to me earlier that this book, Cain and Abel, came out on September 10^th.

Sasso: I did receive the first unbound copies of the book on September 10^th. And then, of course, September 11^th happened. The story took on a even broader meaning and a very powerful message, I believe, because it was raising the whole issue of how one killing becomes two, becomes four, becomes sixteen, and how entire worlds are destroyed.

Talbot: I recently heard one child say, when talking about the image of God, "I think God has something of everyone of us on him," which would imply that what we are seeing now in our world is a civil war. Are these the kinds of ideas that you can talk about with children when they are reading your books?

Sasso: Yes, we often don’t give children enough credit for profound thinking. Children have a very deep spiritual imagination and they ask some of the same questions we ask: Why are we here? What’s our purpose? Why do we live and die? Why is there good and evil? Does there always have to be war? I think that we need to honor our children’s imaginations and their capacity to deal with complex issues, like the issues that Cain and Abel addresses because our children want to talk about these issues. We just have to give them permission and provide the opportunity for that kind of conversation.

Talbot: In the book you describe so beautifully how even the trees were mourning. Those images are so strong.

Sasso: That was a very powerful one for me. I was reading in the literature of the rabbis, the Midrash, which said that the trees went into mourning when Cain killed Abel, that the world somehow is so different when violence enters into it. And, in fact, we could hardly imagine what the world might have been like before violence came into the world with Cain’s murder of Abel. So that’s what I was trying to do, imagine another kind of world without violence because I believe if we can imagine another kind of world, we can make it so.

Talbot: The underlying connectedness of everything in our world as we are talking about nurturing the spiritual journey of our children. Talk more about your book, God’s Paintbrush. I think that was your first book.

Sasso: Yes.

Talbot: I recall a passage: a child looking out the window reciting how a sunbeam peaked through his window and painted a rainbow.

Sasso: Yes, God’s Paintbrush was my first children’s book. What I was trying to do was help children have a conversation about God and to see God in everyday events such as learning to ride a bicycle, perhaps getting lost in a store, having a friend, moving away from the neighborhood. Where was God in their everyday lives? God’s Paintbrush is a series of vignettes and each vignette ends with a question. And the question asks the child to have a conversation about where they experience God in their everyday lives. The wonderful thing about this book is that children love the questions. Whenever children tell me what they like about the book, they say, "I like the questions! I want to talk about these issues." They often haven’t had that opportunity before.

Talbot: And the questions are introspective. The simple, piercing honesty of children teaches all of us as adults, doesn’t it?

Sasso: Absolutely. We are all on a spiritual journey, but if we would take the hand of a child we would help our journey along the way because our children have this incredible sense of wonder and spontaneity. Just as they can learn from us, we can learn something from their wondrous view of the world.

Talbot: Children’s literature, Sandy, and narratives such as you have shared are a marvelous vehicle for expression of Jewish values, but much broader than Jewish values. It seems to encompass human values that bring us all together.

Sasso: Absolutely. We are talking about stories that are paradigms for all of the emotions that we feel, particularly when we talk about Biblical stories. It doesn’t attach to any one particular religion because it addresses us across all religious lines. We express our spiritual souls in a particular religious tradition, but we all have the same spiritual questions. Narratives really help us explore those questions in very deep ways.

Talbot: I want to talk about your own spiritual soul. You have written that if women could pour their souls into the Biblical stories—stories that often leave them invisible—those stories would be different. How is that?

Sasso: It’s a wonderful question and it’s something I love to do. Often when we look at a Biblical narrative we don’t really hear women’s voices. Sometimes we don’t even know women’s names. We certainly don’t know their stories. If we can breathe a woman’s breath into those stories, we would find a whole new world, a whole new way of looking at things. I just love to kind of fill in those blank spaces when we don’t know exactly what women were thinking or feeling. It opens up a whole new way of looking at the Biblical stories and it allows us to read our story into the ancient narrative.

Talbot: Sandy Sasso, your story. What inspired you to become a rabbi?

Sasso: I love Judaism. I love teaching. I love writing. I love being with people. It seemed that being a rabbi was just the right thing to do.

Talbot: Well, you have inspired us all. Thank you so much for your gifts.