A Brief History of Rabbi Cards

In 1982, Arthur Shugarman, since his youth an avid collector of coins, stamps, and other items, sold his prized collection of baseball cards upon embarking on a more pious way of life. He soon discovered a new passion: creating and selling cards bearing on one side the image of a rabbi and information about him on the other. Although Shugarman was not the first to distribute such a product, his was the version that caught on and became an unexpected success in ultra-Orthodox circles—but, as Zev Eleff writes, not without arousing discontent: