Roman Sandler wanted to write a book for his daughter Shira to explain the situation in Israel. Despite efforts to shield her from discussions revolving around the events of Oct. 7, the 5-year-old couldn’t escape the whispers, especially when visitors came over to their Los Angeles home.
Determined to address her burgeoning curiosity, Sandler embarked on a nightly ritual after tucking Shira and his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter into bed: writing what would become “Under the Rockets’ Glow: Shira’s Journey to Courage.” This illustrated book introduces readers to Shira, who learns about her Jewish heritage through her father’s inspiring stories. Set against the backdrop of a bomb shelter in Israel, Shira discovers courage amid the cacophony of rocket fire.
Talking to the Journal, Sandler recounted how the idea to write the book came about: “My wife is Israeli, and we both have families in Israel. We would talk about the situation, and every time our daughter walked in the room, we would hush up because we didn’t want to scare her. At first, we just didn’t tell her anything, and then we understood we can’t keep this from her. She’s just wondering why we’re always getting silent whenever she is around. We realized we have to tell her something. We have to make it palatable in a way that she could understand without getting too scared.”
Sandler had never written a book. He’s an engineer at a medical technology company who liked to read his daughters bedtime stories when he came home from work. However, he found himself underwhelmed by the children’s books available. The storylines were not captivating, and the images left much to be desired. Slowly, the idea that he could craft something better began to take root in his mind.
“I was thinking, if I can write a kids’ book, why not one about something that can help my daughter understand the situation? … I didn’t want to go into the nuances of what happened on Oct. 7. I don’t think that’s age-appropriate, but I wanted Shira and other children who read the book to understand the context of what happened. That we’re Jewish and we have a very long history and experienced a lot of bad things, but with God’s help and the strength of our community, we have been able to get through them all. And so, we will be able to go through this too, and we shouldn’t be pessimistic.”
The book opens with Shira, a young girl who lives in Israel and is having trouble falling asleep because of the sound of rocket fire. To help her to sleep, her dad starts telling her stories from Jewish history. “It starts with our connection to the land of Israel and also stories of how we were persecuted in the past and emerge stronger,” he said. “It tells the story how God promised the land of Israel to Abraham, showing our kind of connection to the land thousands of thousands of years ago. It goes through the stories of David and how the Temple was destroyed and the Maccabees and how we spread into Diaspora and then it kind of weasels to our modern history. And how we got back to the land of Israel in 1948 and how we miraculously won the 1967 war.”
A few weeks after he began writing the book, it was ready for publication. Shira was thrilled with the book and that the main character was named after her. Sandler also used AI tools to create characters that resemble him and his daughter. He anticipated selling only a few dozen copies at most, but an unexpected endorsement pushed the book to the top of Amazon’s best-selling Jewish Children’s book list. “Mayim Bialik shared the book on her profile, which created a lot of love for it, but also created a lot of hate,” Sandler said. “It went viral from there.”
While many purchased the book, which was also translated into Hebrew, others seized the opportunity to label it as Jewish propaganda. The level of animosity, Sandler said, caught him off guard and left him feeling overwhelmed. Here he was, endeavoring to explain the situation to his daughter and other children, and some sought to distort its message.
“They were disparaging the book, saying that it’s Nazi Zionist propaganda, that it’s trying to indoctrinate children into supporting genocide. Someone on TikTok basically rewrote the whole book to show that it’s not historically accurate. A lot of comments were saying, ‘Go on Amazon and write bad reviews about the book.’” Amazon is doing a decent job keeping a lot of those comments out, he said, because they are coming from unverified users, people who didn’t even read the book, but some are still up there. “Some were saying this cover shows Israelis just sitting and watching how Gaza is being destroyed even though obviously the bombs and rockets are targeting Israeli cities. It’s very painful for me that a book I wrote for Jews of all backgrounds turned into a political thing and to hate.”
Despite the backlash, Sandler, who welcomed a baby boy last week, remains gratified by the book’s success. To date, 1,400 copies have been sold, and soon the book will be available in Israel as well.
“It will make me happy if it will bring value to Israeli children who are going through this, hear rocket sounds at night and the alarm and need to run to bomb shelter.” – Roman Sandler
“It will make me happy if it will bring value to Israeli children who are going through this, hear rocket sounds at night and the alarm and need to run to bomb shelter,” he said. “My hope is that it will instill in them a sense of pride in their Jewish heritage and history and reassure them that we will prevail once more.”
The book is available on Kindle, Amazon and in stores, including Target and Walmart.
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