Dr. Ronald Eisenberg’s quest for stamps with Jewish themes led the Tiburon radiologist to some far-flung and unlikely places. Like Micronesia, for instance.
Leafing through a Scott stamp catalog, the longtime collector was surprised to find that the tiny Pacific island nation had printed a stamp featuring the late rabbi and philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel.
“That’s the fascinating thing,” says Eisenberg, who has just published a book called “The Jewish World in Stamps” featuring some 2,000 Jewish stamps from 70 countries. Many “are not places you would have thought [knew] that much about Judaica.”
Though none of the stamps used in the book are rare or cost more than $10, Eisenberg needed to employ some clever detective work to locate a few of them.
After discovering the Heschel stamp in the catalog, for instance, Eisenberg was determined to track it down. Heschel, who died in 1972, had officiated at Eisenberg’s wedding some three decades ago and the rabbi’s wife, Sylvia, had accompanied Eisenberg’s wife, violinist Zina Schiff, at her first recital in Israel.
“We had been searching for it a long time,” said Eisenberg, the chairman of radiology at Oakland’s Highland Hospital.
“This was the last stamp that got in the book. We saved space with the hope we’d be able to find it.”
Eisenberg, a member of Tiburon’s Congregation Kol Shofar, eventually did. First, however, he made several failed attempts to locate it, even corresponding unsuccessfully with the postmaster of Micronesia.
Finally, the owner of an Oakland stamp shop suggested that Eisenberg contact a dealer in Florida. When he called, “The question wasn’t, ‘Maybe I can get it for you.’ It was, ‘How many do you want?'”
Eisenberg wound up purchasing three of the prized stamps, issued in 2000, showing a white-bearded Heschel against a green background. The author kept one for himself, gave one to Sylvia Heschel and used the third on page 72 of his book.
Micronesia isn’t the only unexpected country to have published stamps with a Jewish twist.
The tiny Caribbean island of St. Vincent has a 1997 stamp of opera singer Beverly Sills. Bandleader Artie Shaw is featured on a 1996 stamp from Dominica, also in the Caribbean. Senegal printed a slapstick rendition of the Three Stooges in 1999.
“You find there are a bizarre variety of reasons why countries print stamps,” says Eisenberg, who first started collecting Israeli stamps after a trip there in the early 1970s. “Many of these countries may have no idea that these stamps are Jewish-related.”
Some countries print stamps as revenue-generating collectors’ items. “Presumably the countries were just using these as examples of famous [people] and yet they happen to be Jewish.”
Still other countries have printed stamps of ancient synagogues and other Jewish sights, such as a 1987 stamp from Barbados depicting a marble laver or basin from a synagogue there dating back to 1654.
Not surprisingly, most of the world’s Jewish stamps are Israeli. Eisenberg’s book contains about 1,000 examples, ranging from stamps depicting flowers to one showing war ships and Super Mirage jets. Others illustrate Israeli history from historic Jerusalem and early settlement to computer technology and bioengineering.
Eisenberg estimates that he has assembled about 1,400 different Israeli stamps. His favorites depict flora, fauna, famous artwork and animals.
After collecting stamps while on trips to Israel, Eisenberg changed his technique when he branched out to Jewish stamps worldwide. “I did what everyone does nowadays: I went online,” he said.
A stamp dealer in Quebec wound up becoming a gold mine, where Eisenberg said he located the “vast majority” of the stamps.
He hopes that youngsters and adults alike will gain an appreciation for Jewish history and culture through his book, which is organized by such subjects as the Bible, the diaspora, Jews in world culture, Zionism and the state of Israel and Jewish traditions and values.
“It’s a painless way of learning history,” says Eisenberg, who has text accompanying the 2,000 color illustrations. “It’s an educational experience as well as an esthetic one.”
But finding a publisher involved some persistence as well as serendipity, even for Eisenberg — the author of 18 medical textbooks.
At first Eisenberg had no luck finding a publisher, largely because of the printing costs associated with reproducing color images of the stamps. One editor, however, referred him to Maurice Schreiber, publisher of the Shengold Jewish Encyclopedia.
“Lo and behold, he loved the idea,” said Eisenberg, who now hopes to publish a second volume.