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Sculptor and Judaica artist Gary Rosenthal's menorahs, dreidels, and candlesticks appear today on the shelves and tables of many American Jews, who treasure their combination of beauty and functionality. But Rosenthal was also part of a revolution that transformed Jewish ceremonial objects into an art form.

Working for his father, a stove repairman after college, Rosenthal was assigned the task of fixing a broken stove grate by welding it with a torch.

"I fell in love with the torch, and after college, instead of getting job I started to make things," he said.

Although he grew up in a Conservative Jewish household in a Washington, D.C., suburb, Rosenthal was not active in the Jewish community for many years. But one day at a show at the Jewish community center in Baltimore, someone asked him if he could make a menorah. He was a little surprised.

"There was no Judaica available in the 70s," he recalled. "When I was growing up, people didn't have Judaica on display," he said. "Menorahs, candlesticks, seder plates -- they stayed stacked away in a drawer until you needed to use them, "then after you clean the wax out, you put them away."

He attributed that disinterest in beautiful ritual objects to a post-Holocaust discomfort with flaunting Jewishness.

When he did make a couple of menorahs and brought them to the next JCC show, he said, they sold, and Rosenthal's career as a Judaica artist was launched.

For many years his ritual pieces have been popular wedding and bar mitzvah gifts, and at its height his workshop employed 50 people. As his business became more stable, about 15 people are able to meet the demand, and in the last 10 years Rosenthal has been able to indulge another interest, one he is bringing with him to the Jewish Center in Princeton Nov. 22.

"My real interest is not in art and making Jewish art, but in social action and education," he said. "I decided to take Judaica creation and using it as a vehicle to get people involved, to educate children, and to involve families in their own Judaism."

Rosenthal calls this program the Hiddur Mitzvah Project. As he explains on his Web site, "The Hebrew word mitzvah literally means commandment, but in the Jewish tradition, it has also come to mean blessing or good deed. Hiddur means to make beautiful. Thus, the concept of hiddur mitzvah can be viewed as a directive to make commandments and their fulfillment beautiful while doing good."

In celebration of the Jewish Center's 60th anniversary this year, the synagogue is working with Rosenthal both as the facilitator of the Hiddur Mitzvah Project and as a Judaica artist. The hiddur mitzvah involves a day of art making, where individuals will create their own menorahs, candlesticks, and other objects in the signature Rosenthal style combining copper, brass, and steel with brilliant fused glass. Rosenthal will actually fuse the glass at his studio. Family programs will take place at 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. and an adult program at 11 a.m. with mimosas and bagels. For information or to participate, view the objects it is possible to make at www.hiddurmitzvah.org and contact Neil Wise at (609) 921-0100, ext. 209, or email him at nwise@thejewishcenter.org.

The Jewish Center has also commissioned Rosenthal to create a unique tzedakah box, through the Sapoff Art Fund, which the Jewish Center's religious school will play a part in creating. The tzedakah box will have six compartments, each with a separate opening that can be labeled according to the causes the synagogue is currently raising money for. Rosenthal's goal with the piece is to draw people into tzedakah, an important Jewish value. What the children will do is each select a piece of beautifully colored glass (which are tumbled in sand so there are no sharp edges) and add it to the mosaic that will be fused and incorporated into the tzedakah box.

Helaine Isaacs, chair of the event, made Rosenthal pieces with each of her boys, for one a menorah and the other a mezuzah.

"It is very special on holidays to use these items that we made together as a family," she said. "This opportunity is all about l'dor va dor, from generation to generation -- making ritual objects together that one day we will be passing on to another generation."

She was particularly excited about having the religious school students together create a gift for the congregation.

"I love the idea that our religious school students will be making something that will be at the synagogue forever," she said.

Rosenthal's Hiddur Mitzvah Project has been far reaching, both nationally and internationally. At a Franklin Lakes synagogue, 100 families made two Kiddush cups each, one for themselves and another as gift to Ethiopian children having bar mitzvahs in Israel. A girl in Denver whose grandfather was a survivor made 30 Shabbat candlesticks with her friends and sent them to the Jewish community in Poland closest to where her grandfather was born.

After Katrina, families around the country paid for and created a menorah or a dreidel that was donated to New Orleans families who had lost everything. Rosenthal brought back a kosher caterer who left the community and made latkes and hotdogs for the families who came to the party he sponsored. In Buenos Aires during the difficult economic times eight or nine years ago, people in the United States made Shabbat candlesticks, and Rosenthal took the profits from them and sponsored a Friday night Oneg Shabbat dinner monthly for a year.

Rosenthal said about the program: "It's such an engaging project. I'm blessed that we came up with this program that allows us to not just create art and sell it, but to involve people in art in a personal way -- to get to create art as a catalyst for more good."