The caricature shows Ze'ev's typical character leaving a smashed car with the registration plate תשנ"א) 1990-1991). The character has a broken arm, an empty briefcase, and is barefoot. He has a smile on his face and is looking at a brand new car with the registration plate תשנ"ב) 1991-1992). On top of the new car is a flag with greetings for a Happy New Year!
The damaged car, representing the previous year, shows the problems Israel and the world faced in the previous year. The car has been hit by missiles, and it is surrounded by words such as employment, absorption (of new immigrants), economy and Yugoslavia, representing the hardships of the past year. Next to the car is a punctured wheel in the shape of the hammer and sickle – the symbol of communism. A can of leaking petrol represents the economy. The new shiny car, however, represents a fresh and optimistic start!
Israel faced many security problems in 1991, including the Gulf War when missiles attacked many cities. In the same year, Operation Solomon commenced, bringing almost 15,000 Jews from Ethiopia to Israel. The 1990s also saw large waves of immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. These waves of immigration were very joyful events, but the absorption of such large numbers of new immigrants posed many complex challenges. 1990-1 was also a year of economic adversity due to the security situation and the cost of the absorption of the new immigrants, together with pre-existing economic problems. These were the years when the communist regimes fell and Yugoslavia collapsed.
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Ze’ev – Yaakov Farkash (1923–2002), known as Ze’ev, was an Israeli cartoonist and illustrator. Born in Budapest, Hungary, Farkash survived the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps. He then tried to enter Israel illegally during the British Mandate but was caught and sent by the British to an internment camp in Cyprus. Farkash finally arrived in Israel in 1947 and immediately fought in the War of Independence. When he began drawing political cartoons for newspapers, he signed them “Ze’ev” (wolf), which is a Hebrew translation of his Hungarian surname, Farkash. Ze’ev published cartoons in the Israeli newspapers Ha’aretz, Ma’ariv, and Davar Hashavua and the international newspapers The New York Times, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel. He had a great impact on Israeli caricaturists and is widely considered one of Israel’s greatest political cartoonists.
Shana Tova Cards - The earliest instance of a written “shana tova” greeting is a fourteenth-century letter written by the Ashkenazi rabbi known as the Maharil (Jacob ben Moses Moelin). This letter affirms the existence of this custom in German Jewish communities at the time. In the eighteenth century, the custom began spreading beyond the German-speaking realm to other large concentrations of Jews in Eastern Europe, especially Poland. By the end of the century, Shana Tova cards began to take on distinct characteristics, such as special writing paper, with the custom spreading throughout the entire Ashkenazi world during the nineteenth century. The postal service emerged around this time, and in the 1880s, Jewish entrepreneurs began to print commercial greeting Shana Tova cards. By this time, Shana Tova cards constituted the main body of postcards sent by Jews, and this would remain so for around 100 years.
Between the end of the nineteenth century and the end of First World War, a time known as the “Golden Age of Postcards,” the vast majority of the mail sent by Jews in Europe and America consisted of Shana Tova cards. Today, in the digital era, cards sent by post have given way to text messages and emails.