Jewish Group) Meet the Israeli-born artist who designed the first US coin to feature an LGBT person
Some Jews might resent filling the role of representative Jew in communities across the country without many fellow members of the tribe. But not Elana Hagler.
When it came time for the annual Christmas assembly at her children’s school, the professor of art at Alabama State University gave her children plenty of gelt, the foil-wrapped chocolate coins used when playing dreidel on Hanukkah, to distribute to the other children.
Was she worried about the way that Jews handing out gold coins would look, given the longstanding antisemitic stereotypes about Jews and money? Not really. She found it funny.
“Somehow it becomes even that much more amusing and ironic that what does their mom do? She sits around and designs the coins, the gelt,” Hagler said.
Hagler is likely the first ever Israeli-born artist to design coins for the U.S. Mint through its Artist Infusion Program, which she joined in 2019. In 2020, Hagler designed the George H.W. Bush presidential $1 coin. In 2022, the Mint will produce a coin honoring Sally Ride, an astronaut and the first American woman to go to space, with a design by Hagler as part of the American Women Quarters series. Ride will be the first known LGBT person to be honored on a U.S. coin.
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