GIFT GUIDE

ANNUAL HOL

The rabbi trading cards are available
by writing Torah Personalities, Inc.,
P.O. Box 32514, Baltimore, Md. 21282

Over 100 ceramic artists' work
will be featured at this show.

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

November 13 - December 31, 2004

HOLIDAY GALLERY HOURS
Mon - Sat • 10am - 6pm
Sun • noon - 4pm

Special Shopping Nights

Every Wednesday in December, 6

PM -

9 PM

PEWABIC POTTERY

1 0125 EAST JEFFERSON AVENUE
Drrito•r, MI 48214 • 313.822.0954
www.pEvvAmc.co N/1

HIDALGO AMY LEVINE DESIGNS ULLA DARNI LANCASTER

HESTON DESI GNS

Israelis have had their own rabbi
trading-card industry since at least
the mid-'80s. Indeed, yeshivah stu-
dents in Jerusalem created a minor
hubbub in 2002 when they were
found collecting rabbi cards in lieu
of Torah study.
And for years, small photographs
of rabbis without identification or
stats on the back had been sold in
New York for $2-$3 a piece.
Shugarman also said black-and-
white rabbi cards were given as
prizes to studious yeshivah students
in the 1970s. Today, yeshivahs are a
significant buyer of Shugarman's
cards.
After Shugarman's appearance on
To Tell the Truth, which prompted
mention of Torah Personalities in
Time and Sports Illustrated, the cards
returned to obscurity — although
they continued to be a common
item in Jewish stores in North
America as well as in England,
South Africa, Australia and Israel.
Then, in 2000, the hit comedy
film Keeping the Faith, the story of a
friendship between a rabbi and
priest in New York, plunged the
cards back into popular culture by
showcasing fictional, 1980s-era
"Heroes of the Torah" cards collect-
ed by the rabbi — played by actor
Ben Stiller — as a child.
The newest series, distributed by
the Jewish candy company Paskesz,
shows rabbis performing traditional
mitzvahs or commandments. They
range from the usual — eating
matzah on Passover — to the
unusual — chasing away a mother
bird before taking eggs from her
nest.
In an unscientific survey of New
York rabbis spanning the more
mainstream Jewish denominations,
none of them took real issue with
rabbi cards, though some expressed
distaste; others just laughed.
And for how long does Shugarman
plan to continue making the cards?
"As long as the kids want more
cards and I'm not losing too mu h
money, I'd like to keep it u p," he
said.

ESTATE JEWELRY FITZ AN D FI TZ

English and Hebrew: birthplace,
schooling, denomin.:.
of yeshivah, and Jewish date of their
death, if applicable.
"There is no question that baseball
cards make baseball more popular
with the kids," said Shugarman,
who was a longtime collector of
baseball cards. "Rabbi cards are
meant to do the same thing" for
Judaism.
But, and Shugarman stresses this
part, the heroes of the Torah are
meant to pick up where he says
today's heroes of sports falter: gen-
erosity, integrity and virtue.
Whereas the emphasis in baseball
card collecting today is on mint
condition and monetary value, the
concept of the rabbi cards is old-
fashioned: to see and appreciate the
person on the card.
That's not to say that all rabbi
cards are equal. Back on To Tell the
Truth, as the show's celebrity panel
grilled Shugarman, he was asked to
name the most prolific rabbi.
"Moshe Feinstein," he said,
instinctively.
Nobody on the panel had heard of
the revered dead rabbi, one of the
century's most influential authorities
on Jewish law.
In the rabbi card "rankings," a
Feinstein card is worth more than,
say, a Rabbi Nachum Mordechai
Perlow (deceased, from Brooklyn),
just as a baseball card of Dodgers
outfielder Shawn Green is more
valuable than a card of Red Sox pla-
toon player Gabe Kapler (both
Jewish).
Shugarman, who's been an
accountant for 27 years, and his
brother Laibel, 45, a mortgage bro-
ker, work out of Arthur's apartment.
Both brothers were raised in a
Reform-Jewish home in Baltimore
but as adults converted to
Orthodox.
Between 1964 and 1980,
Shugarman says he became one of
Maryland's top card collectors,
amassing more than 100,000 trading
cards, mostly baseball, that filled an
entire room in his apartment. He
sold the collection in 1982 for
$10,000.
Shugarman says he just made
rabbi cards "official and organized"
here in the United States. The

NVITATIONAL

z

32889 woodward avenue
royal oak. - mi 48073
248.549-9100

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rri

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on

rn

WOLF DESIGNS

since 1934

holiday
store hours

monday thru
saturday

10 to 6

thursday

10 to 8

'MO

GIFT
GUIDE

this holiday season — visit us

11/26
2004

west side of woodward avenue • 1 block south of 14'

910130

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