The Obamenorah!

We have officially partnered with Temple Micah, and the details are ironed out for this project to make a menorah for the White House. For all the details, I am passing along the explanatory letter from Deb Srabstein of Temple Micah:

Dear Colleague,

I would like to invite you to join me in a very exciting opportunity. I am working with nationally renowned Judaica sculptor, Gary Rosenthal, to commission a unique Hannukiah to be presented to President Obama this coming Hannukah. No matter your personal or political views, I know you join me in wanting to express and to share our hope with our President. In order to create a truly special sculpture, we are extending this invitation to Jewish schools and communities across the country, in hopes that Jewish communities from all 50 states will be represented in the final piece (the “Obamenorah”). To see a picture of this very special menorah, visit this page.

To accomplish this, Gary Rosenthal will be donating his time and materials to send glass mosaic kits to schools and synagogues across the country. There will be no charge to the participating schools. As a completely free activity, you will design a small triangle of glass that represents how you light up your community with g’milut chasadim, acts of loving kindness. As part of the activity, you will also make a drawing to represent the same, and send along a one page story of how you share your light with those around you.

The glass will be fired and placed alongside other triangles to create a beautiful work of art on the menorah. The drawing and story will be placed in a book that will be presented along with the final Hannukiah.

In order to participate, here is what you need to do:

1. Contact Gary Rosenthal at garymrosenthal@aol.com to let him know that you’d like for your community to participate no later than October 10^th. Gary will then mail you the materials needed to participate in the project.
2. Pose this question to your community: “How does our community help to bring light to the world?” While of course your answers might be abstract, we are looking for specific community-wide projects or initiatives that you feel may be inspiring to others. Please write a one paragraph answer.
3. Honor one artist in your community to draw a picture of how your community brings light to the world. You may choose an artist old or young, famous or not yet famous.
4. You will then create a small mosaic triangle based on the picture. The mosaic triangle will be based on the picture/tikkun olam project, but will be an abstraction of it. You may choose one color or idea that best represents the whole picture.

The glass piece, picture, and paragraph need to be received by Gary no later than November 15^th, 2009. The picture and short paragraph will go into a book that explains the process that went into creating the menorah. Gary will then take each glass triangle and integrate it into the menorah. Additionally, we will create a book that accompanies the menorah with the description of each project.

Gary will also ask your help in creating smaller versions of the "Obamenorah." Each participating community will receive five glass triangles to turn into mosaics and then each one, individually, will become the front of a menorah. This limited edition item will be available for sale on a first come/first serve basis with 100% of the proceeds going to fund future Hiddur Mitzvah projects.

Thank you for joining me in this exciting project.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Please pass this letter on to other colleagues!

Kol tuv (all the best),
Deborah Ayala Srabstein
educationdirector@templemicah.org

Facebook

If you haven't already, check out our Facebook page! There we have news, photo albums from around the studio, and you can keep up to date with everything going on here.

We're approaching one hundred Facebook fans now and I'd like to let you know, once we hit double zeroes, each of our fans will be receiving something special from the Gary Rosenthal Collection! I can't go into details yet, but I think you'll like it.

So if you haven't become a fan of ours over on Facebook, now is the time to do so, and tell your friends. The sooner we hit one hundred, the sooner we can send out your something special!

Hiddur Mitzvah in the News

This is a little old, but it somehow slipped past my attention until now.

Via The Atlanta Jewish Times Online

11/27/2008 8:32:00 AM

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Participants order Judaica items from the Gary Rosenthal Collection, such as a menorah, tzedakah box or dreidel. They use special Hiddur Mitzvah kits to design their own fused glass patterns. The designs are sent to the studio, where they are fired and added to the modern metal items – each one as unique as its creator. Congregation Beth Shalom members Rene Montaigne and Leslie Lopp design fused glass for artistic Judaica as part of the Hiddur Mitzvah Project. COVER: Building Community Through Art Jody Steinberg Special to the Jewish Times Congregation Beth Shalom members Rene Montaigne and Leslie Lopp designed fused glass for artistic Judaica as part of the Hiddur Mitzvah Project, a popular community project sponsored by the Beth Shalom Sisterhood. The glass will be fused and mounted on metal Judaica items designed by the Gary Rosenthal Collection. "My brother is very hard to buy gifts for," said Montaigne, "but he liked the Tzedakah box I made him at the last Hiddur Mitzvah project so much that I'm making one for the other brother." The Hiddur Mitzvah project has been a popular program at Beth Shalom, because members love coming together to be creative. The items make unique gifts or become special family keepsakes, according to Andrea Rosenbloom, who organized the event with Marcia Moneit. "The Hiddur Mitzvah Fund has worked with tens of thousands of people around the world who use art with mitzvah," explains Judaica artist Gary Rosenthal, who founded Hiddur Mitzvah. "It's a beautiful mitzvah to make Judaica - one of 613 commandments is to make beautiful ritual. People connect with each other and help other communities; the art project becomes a catalyst for mitzvot." Rosenthal founded the Hiddur Mitzvah Foundation about eight years ago as a tool to build community around creating art and turning it into a mitzvah project. Profits from the sales of the kits fund programs around the world. For example, Rosenthal sponsored the first organized Jewish community event in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Residents came together and created over 500 donated menorahs and dreidels in what's been described as "the calm after the storm - a chance to relax among community and create something beautiful to replace so much that was lost." The program was such a success that Hiddur Mitzvah returned in the spring with donated mezuzot, and ultimately helped found the New Orleans Jewish Music Festival. In other Hiddur Mitzvah projects, grandchildren of Holocaust survivors created two items each - one to keep, and one for Hiddur Mitzvah to deliver to survivors in diminishing Jewish communities in Poland and Russia. Hiddur Mitzvah has also sponsored Purim in Uganda and Shabbat dinner in Argentina. A group in Maryland created fused glass art to commemorate Kristallnacht.

New Challah Knives and Boards

Just because the New York show is over and the new catalog is on its way out the doors doesn't mean that we've stopped designing new work! Introducing two new challah boards and accompanying knives:


These knives will have a suggested retail of $80 and the boards, $120.

New Orleans Streetcar Tzedakah Box Update

A little while about I wrote about the special NOLA Tzedakah Box commission we created. I'd like to mention that for whoever wants a spectacular Trolley Tzedakah Box that helps support a good cause, they're now available for sale! Click the image below for more details.

Email Addresses

I would just like to post a quick note to all of our stores. We at the GRC frequently send news and specials via email to our accounts - but quite a few bounce back each time! To ensure that you don't miss out on any specials just send our webmaster a quick note at hwhitney@collectgaryrosenthal.com with the name of your account and current email addresses and he will make sure your account is up to date.

For our readers who are not store owners and just fans of our work, don't forget that you can keep up with new product releases and project news by adding your email to our list by submitting it in the form at the top of this page!

Price Lists, Catalogs, and the Web

We do our best to send out our catalogs accurately reflecting our artwork, prices, and available items. Because it's impossible to make any changes to a printed piece between one catalog mailing and the next, they do get outdated as new products are made, old ones are discontinued, and prices are adjusted in one direction or the other. But never fear, the web is here! Don't forget that we have an up to date website with every current item we have available, along with their dimensions and descriptions. And when you log into the retailer's section you will have access to all current prices and even be able to place an order from right there! As always, if you have any questions at all, don't hesitate to contact us at 301.493.5577.

A Couple of Fun Events

The past few days we've been involved in a few fun events. First we held a glass making activity at the University of Maryland Hillel Freshman Fest. As an initiative to make tzedakah part of Hillel as well as Hillel part of tzedakah, the students helped to create the glass that is now part of this special tzedakah box mounted inside their building.


A couple days later we had a great group of students from AVODAH - The Jewish Service Corps at the studio to meet and talk with Gary, see the place and participate in a Hiddur Mitzvah project.

More pictures from both events can be found here at our facebook page.