This is a Shana Tova card with a photograph of Alfred Dreyfus in the centre. This photograph, printed in 1901, includes wishes for the Jewish New Year in different languages: Hebrew, English, German and Yiddish. Below the picture of Dreyfus is his name in Yiddish—".קאפיטאן אלפרעד דרייפוס"
This is one of a series of Shana Tova cards printed in 1901 (Jewish year 5662) that showed images of people who were important to the Jewish public at the time: Alfred Dreyfus, Emil Zola, Theodore Herzl, Max Nordau, and even the Turkish Sultan.
Alfred Dreyfus was the victim of an anti-Semitic trial that became famous throughout the world. In 1894 Dreyfus, a French-Jewish artillery officer, was accused of treason. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly transferring French military secrets to German spies. He was publicly humiliated and imprisoned on Devil's island where he spent close to five difficult years.
Eventually the truth prevailed, and evidence proved that Dreyfus had been wrongly accused. Nevertheless, it was only after much pressure from the public and from political figures that the French authorities agreed to reopen the case in 1899. Finally, in 1906, Dreyfus was exonerated, and all the accusations were shown to be false and based on anti-Semitic biases.
The Dreyfus affair is one of the most infamous anti-Semitic episodes of modern times. Not only was the affair initiated by anti-Jewish views, but it caused even more hatred of Jews throughout French and European society. It was for this reason that Dreyfus' retrial and exoneration were so important to the Jews of France and Europe as a whole. Throughout the Jewish world, Dreyfus became a role model, proving that it is possible to fight anti-Semitism and injustice. This is perhaps why the photograph of the French officer appeared on this Shana Tova card at the beginning of the twentieth century.
This Shana Tova card is one of an extensive collection of cards in the National Library of Israel. There is also a large collection of items regarding the Dreyfus Affair and private items that belonged to Dreyfus, such as his wedding contract (Ketubah) and private letters sent by his wife while he was in prison.
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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.
