This is a Shana Tova card printed in Israel in 1958. At the centre of the card is an ostensibly typical Israeli family: a mother, father and three boys. This may have been a personalized Shana Tova card, or this family may have been chosen as the model of an Israeli family.
Around the photograph there are different motifs of the New Year. On the top of the card are the words "שנה טובה" – "Happy New Year." The year תשי"ט) 1958-9) appears on a ribbon carried by a bird and below it is a horseshoe, a popular (non-Jewish) lucky charm.
Beneath the family is a drawing of a Torah scroll and to the side an elaborate depiction of the Exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt.
Would You Like to Know More?
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.
