Six "Shanah Tovah "Greeting Cards – British, Canadian and American Forces – 1919-1954

Six "Shanah Tovah "Greeting Cards – British, Canadian and American Forces – 1919-1954

Six "shanah tovah" greeting cards printed for Jewish soldiers serving in the British, Canadian and American forces. 1919-1954. English and some Hebrew.
• "Shanah tovah" card issued by the British forces in Palestine, 1919 – printed greeting from Drum Major A. H. Silver, 40th battalion of the Royal Fusiliers.
• "Shanah tovah" card issued by the Jewish Welfare Board, U.S. Army. Sent in 1941.
• "Shanah tovah" card issued by the Service Men's Center, run by the Canadian Jewish Congress, for Jewish soldiers serving in the Canadian army. 1943. With handwritten greeting. Envelope enclosed.
• Illustrated "shanah tovah" card, from the South West Pacific theatre during WWII. [U.S. Army?], 1944-5.
• "Shanah tovah" card with a photograph of a Jewish soldier in the British army. "Somewhere in England", 1944-5.
• Trilingual "shanah tovah" card (Hebrew, English and Chinese), depicting a soldier, a Star of David and a Jew blowing the shofar. Busan, Korea, 1954.
Size and condition vary.

Enclosed:
• Handwritten letter (Russian), written on the official stationery of the Jewish Welfare Board – U.S. Army and Navy. With a "shanah tovah" greeting at the top of the stationery. The letter was sent from Camp Dix, near Trenton NJ; original envelope enclosed addressed to Mrs. Joffe in Lakewood NJ, 1918.
• Handbill – appeal for Jewish refugees in Europe, at the end of WWII, issued by the South African Jewish War Appeal, [1944?].
• "Aloha Chapel Bulletin", periodical for Jewish soldiers serving in the American marine corps in Hawai; Rosh Hashanah and High Holidays issue. Pearl Harbor, Hawai, 1960.

Provenance: The Dr. Haim Grossman collection.

Dr. Chaim Grossman's Israeliana collection is exceptional in size, quality and variety. Grossman, an educator, historian and folklorist, was a methodical, knowledgeable and meticulous collector, and his deep understanding of Palestinian-Yishuv and Israeli material culture set the ground for a one-of-a-kind collection of mundane and less than mundane objects – from the ephemeral, the negligible, the widely available to the rare and singular.
The "shana tovah" collection left by Grossman – a considerable part of which is offered in the present auction – comprises thousands of postcards, cards, letters and other paper items made and sent year after year in, by and for Jewish communities: in Eastern and Western Europe, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, North Africa, North and South America, as part of the tradition of sending hand-written, hand-drawn or printed new year’s greetings, which originated in German Jewry but with the rise of postcards spread to most communities. The earliest items in the collection date to the 1860s; the latest were made in the late 20th century. It includes both beautifully designed, rare, early and singular postcards and cards, and mass-made, highly popular items sold in large quantities, in varying production quality and in dozens of repeating versions, each according to the technical abilities achieved by the local publication industry.
The collector's devotion to his collection is evident in the sheer number of items, in the wealth of techniques, visuals and themes, and in the thorough, intersectional categorization by period, origin, motif, technique and material. Glitter and relief embossing, scraps, lace and golden ink, lithography and celluloid transparencies, plastic, textile and metal decorations; Yiddish, Hebrew, English, Russian, French, Polish, German greetings; children, angels, families, pets, immigrants, travelers, professionals; portraits and tinted reproductions; Judaism, Zionism, the state, the army; the ritual and the mundane; any new year's greeting, in any form whatsoever, had a place in Grossman's collection and was honored as a historical testimony, as a timeless, invaluable treasure.