We with our family and friends a
very healthy, happy and prosperous New Tear.

IRVING & BRENDA ALTUS & FAMILY •

Saying It With Cards

We with our fatuity and friends a
happy and prosperous New Ye*.
healthy,
very

--

EDWARD, ELLEN, WENDY, BEVERLY & JESSICA BETEL

The long, colorful
history of sending
Rosh Hashanah
greetings stretches
om the 1700s to
(Michael Jackson's
era.

L

RABBI DAVID GEFFEN

Special to The Jewish News

Thirty-four years have passed
‘since our first Rosh Hashanah
( in Israel. The most memorable
• part of the pre-high holiday
season was seeing the long
lines in the post office where
,7-ifeople were sending greeting
cards for the New Year. In the
U.S., my wife Rita and I had
annually received New Year
cards and sent some, but in
7Israel those large numbers of
( greetings being sent and
received seemed to be more
natural.
The first individual who
:Mentioned the custom of
extending New Year greet-
ings was Rabbi Jacob
Polino of Italy. In one of
• his works, he stressed that,
from the outset of the
• month of Elul one should
say to anyone one meets,

leshana tova tikatev v'te-
, hatem "may you be
inscribed and sealed for a
good year." He also encour-
aged individuals to add an
• appropriate greeting con-
/ cluding all letters one
/ might write during Elul.
Bernard Gratz included
such a Rosh Hashanah
greeting when he sent a let-
• ter in 1781 from Lancaster,
to a friend in
•
Philadelphia. Such letter
greetings seems to have
been the practice until the
introduction of greeting cards
> in the 19th century.
In his book on Jewish folk
art and the holidays, Heshil
Golnitzki indicates that two
specific examples of Rosh
Hashanah cards have their ori-

Rabbi David Geffen is spiri-
tual leader of Temple Israel in
Scranton, Pa.

gins in Germany in the 1800s.
One card, dated 1841, has a
text in Hebrew and Yiddish
with an attractive gold border.
Another, for the year 1837, is
Arritten on blue paper with a
border with a border of musi-
cal instruments.
This first known printed
greeting card was a Christmas
card produced in London in
the 1840s. The printing of
Rosh Hashanah cards followed
not long after. In fact, one of
the leading producers of such
cards the Tuck company of
London, advertised as Her
Majesty, the Queen's printer.
Cards dating from this peri-
od provide a graphic depiction
of Jewish life at the time — of
holiday observances, family
gatherings, weddings and other
events. In the joint exhibit on
American Jewish life, first held
in 1983, sponsored by the
Anti-Defamation League and
the American Jewish Historical
Society, some of the most
beautiful exhibits on display
were the New Year cards.

,

Many of these greeting
cards are now housed in
archival collections. One, in
the form of a check drawn on
the "Bank of Heaven," promis-
es that "120 happy years will
be granted by the Creator of
the world with health, suste-
nance, blessing and success,
wealth and honor."

The revenue made from
selling greeting cards was seen
as a good source of income
for Jewish organizations. As
early as 1894 a pre-Zionist
group sold cards which
included a poem written by
Chaim Nahman Bialik.
Unfortunately, the cards did
not always include texts of
such high literary level. The
artist Ephraim Moses Lilien's
drawings also appeared on
several New Year cards.
The greatest flood of New
Year cards for fund-raising
came from yeshivot, orphan-
ages and hospitals in Palestine
at the beginning of the centu-
ry. These cards normally
accompanied a calendar, and
the message was quite clear —
that at this time of the year it
was important to assist those
in need, and what better way
than through the purchase of
New Year cards.
A card I saw once in a
home in Atlanta, dated 1912,
had been sent from an orphan-
age in Jerusalem. Attached to
it was a small container of
"Holy Land Honey" for a
sweet New Year. The family
had kept the card intact as a
good luck charm.
Even the U.S. government
produced large numbers of
greeting cards for Jewish
servicemen to send to fami-
ly and friends during World
War II. They were
processed by the "V-mail
service" in which messages
written on special forms
were photographed in
reduced size.
A very triumphant New
Year card from Israel issued
in 1948 showed enemy
vehicles which had been
captured in the War of
Independence.
The 1960s and early
1970s gave birth to Rosh
Hashanah cards with anti-
Vietnam and civil rights
messages. Individuals vied
with each other to send
appropriate card capturing
the most relevant topic of
the day. Interestingly
enough, they continued to
bear the traditional message
of health and happiness for
the year ahead. El

We with our fatuity and friends a
very healthy, happy and prosperous New Tear.

MR. & MRS. MAX DREW & FAMILY

We wish our family andfriend.s. a
very keafthy, happy and prosperous New Teat
JONAS & ANDREA GOLDBERG &FAMILY

- We wish our family and friends a
very healthy, happy and prosperous New Teat

RHODA & MARVIN PERLIN & FAMILY

We wish ourfatuity andfriends.,a.....
very healthy, happy and prosperous NOW Teat

TOBI & JENOE ROTH -

---• •

We wish our family atuffriends i a
very healthy, happy and prosperous New Tear.

TERRY, KAREN, CJ & ERIC WEINGARDEN

ti` trd'=,,,,

A Very Happy and
Healthy New Year
to All Our
Friends and Family.

rg ii ii , LA e

1 rovi5 1
-Titz-
Ima-t

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_

Cystic
Fibrosis
Foundation

10/3
1997

51