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:

Sure enough, the first 36-card series produced by [Shugarman’s] non-profit Torah Personalities, Inc. sold out in about six months. Partnering with a well-to-do kosher candy distributor, Shugarman sold 400,000 packages in a variety of Orthodox-dense locales. In Miami, for example, the owner of Judaica Enterprises found it “unbelievable how many calls I’ve been getting about the rabbi cards.” He therefore seized on the demand and ordered 288 packs. . . . Concomitantly, a Judaica dealer in Detroit estimated that among the 10,000 Orthodox Jews in his area, perhaps a little under two-thirds constituted the considerable market for rabbi cards. . . .

[Some, however], felt uneasy about injecting Jewish holiness into the collecting enterprise. A Reform rabbi in Philadelphia described it as “utter nonsense.” An Orthodox clergyman joked that “there’s nothing wrong except that it’s a form of idolatry.” From the opposite perspective, an Orthodox woman from Long Island opined that it did not redound well to rabbis to be associated with the athletes and celebrities often depicted on trading cards. In her words, rabbis had been “grouped in together with ugliness, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the argument against the distribution of these cards.”

The Torah Personalities operation also seemed to violate the code of modesty that rabbis were expected to follow. In fact, some, like Rabbi Elya Svei of Philadelphia, were reluctant to lend their likenesses to the project, but acquiesced after it was impressed upon them that the cards carried a certain educational value. Nonetheless, the enthusiasts generally overmatched the critics. To date, Torah Personalities Inc. has sold some three-million rabbi cards.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”