Borough Park, Brooklyn - The glasses of the Bobov grand rabbi are for sale on eBay.
Gold-rimmed glasses worn for many years by Rabbi Shlomo Halberstam, the revered grand rabbi of the Brooklyn-based Bobov Hasidim, who died in 2000, are available in an auction with an asking price of $350,000.

Daniel Givotovsky, who works in a computer store in Brooklyn and is a frequent eBay trader, said the family of an optometrist who had treated the grand rabbi had given him the glasses to sell on eBay for a commission. He declined to identify the family.
The rabbi left the glasses with the optometrist when he received a preion for a new pair in 1994.

The sale drew expressions of discomfort from Assemblyman Dov Hikind. ''If somebody was going to buy a sefer Torah and wanted to spend a million dollars I'd say 'God bless him,''' said the Assemblyman, referring to the Torah scroll. ''A sefer Torah is holy. No one's glasses are holy. I find the whole thing totally distasteful.''

The grand rabbi, who helped rebuild the Bobov sect after it was decimated by the Holocaust, and who turned it into one of the world's leading Hasidic communities, died in Brooklyn at age 92. The grand rabbi's son and successor, Naftali Halberstam, died in 2005, at age 74. The Bobov have split over issues of succession and power, and the factions operate out of two separate institutions in Borough Park.

Samuel Heilman, a sociology professor and authority on Jewish studies at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City Unversity of New York), doubted any Bobov Hasid would bid on the glasses. ''Part of a rebbe is mystification and selling items that belong to him demystifies him,'' Dr. Heilman said. ''I suspect that people who try to protect his legacy would be very much opposed to anything like that.''

The auction ends Nov. 15; there are no bids yet. [nytimesblog]