Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, a 1965 graduate of Cheltenham High School, realized as a sophomore that she wanted to become a rabbi even though there were no female rabbis in the United States at the time.
According to local historian Chuck Langerman, Rabbi Eisenberg Sasso’s realization came to her on the night of her confirmation at Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park. Her parents and her mentor at Keneseth Israel, the late Senior Rabbi Bertram Korn, supported her in pursuit of her dream.
After graduating from Cheltenham, Eisenberg Sasso took her dream to Temple University where she received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in religion. Despite meeting with opposition and challenges along the way, she enrolled in Wyncote’s Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1969, and on May 19, 1974, she became the first woman ordained from the Rabbinical College and only the second female to be ordained a rabbi in the United States.
While in rabbinical school, she married classmate Dennis Sasso, making them the first rabbinical couple in world Jewish history. She is also the first rabbi to become a mother when her son, David, was born in 1976.
From 1977 until her retirement in 2013, she served as rabbi along with her husband at the Congregation Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis, Indiana.
She is also the author of many nationally-acclaimed children’s books, including God’s Paintbrush, In God’s Name, But God Remembered: Stories of Women From Creation to the Promised Land, Noah’s Wife; The Story of Naamah, God In Between, For Heaven’s Sake, God Said Amen, Cain and Abel: Finding the Fruits of Peace, Adam and Eve’s First Sunset, Butterflies Under Our Hats, The Shemah in the Mezuzah and Creation’s First Light, Who Counts, 100 Sheep, 10 Coins, 2 Sons, and The Marvelous Mustard Seed.
She has received numerous honorary degrees for her rabbinical pursuits and numerous awards for her writing pursuits.
For more on her life and career, you can click here. You can also watch the video below:
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Photo: Indiana University