This is a drawing which was published in the March 18, 1932 edition of the children’s supplement to the newspaper Davar. The artist, Nachum Gutman, drew a picture with the title, “Purim in Tel Aviv.” The main image in the illustration is a large face or mask with wings where the ears would be. The face is on the beach and a ladder reaches from the ground to the left eye. Little smiling people and clowns are climbing out of the mouth and eyes, and one is sliding down the nose. A three-piece band is perched on the top of the head, and other figures are dancing in groups on the beach. There is a large bowl full of hamentaschen and a barrel and large wine bottle. In the background there is a ship on the sea, a building with apalm tree beside it. The overall mood portrayed in the illustration is one of fun and festivity. Below the illustration is a short poem about the atmosphere in Tel Aviv on Purim, written by the Israeli children's writer Anda Pinkerfeld Amir.
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Purim - Purim is celebrated on the 14 Adar as the day the Jewish people were saved from destruction during the fourth century BCE. The heroine of the Purim story, Queen Esther, worked together with her uncle, Mordechai, to reverse the decree of genocide issued against the Jewish people by Haman, the vizier of Persia. It is the tradition on Purim to dress up in costumes, distribute small food packages known as mishloach manot, give charity, and listen to the reading of the Megilla – the Book of Esther.
Davar LeYeladim - Davar LeYeladim, the magazine that printed this cartoon, can be seen to reflect the lives of children at the time. It printed nature stories, poetry, articles on science, nature, and geography by many well-known authors as well as jokes, crossword puzzles, and articles written by children.
Tel Aviv-Jaffa – Founded in 1909 by a small group of Jews on the outskirts of old Jaffa, Tel Aviv is now Israel’s second largest city and the cultural, financial, and technological centre of the country. It is located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the heart of the Gush Dan Metropolitan area. The original founders of Tel Aviv were looking for a healthier environment outside of the crowded city of Jaffa. With the help of the Jewish National Fund, they purchased 12 acres of sand dunes and called their new city Tel Aviv (spring hill). “Tel Aviv” was the name given by Nahum Sokolow to his Hebrew translation of Theodor Herzl’s classic, Altneuland. Meir Dizengoff was the first mayor of Tel Aviv and served for 25 years. In 1917, the Ottoman rulers expelled most of the Jewish community from Tel Aviv. With the end of World War I and the start of British rule the following year, the Jews were invited back to Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is sometimes called the “White City” due to the 4000 or more buildings built in the Bauhaus style. The mostly white Bauhaus buildings were built in the 1930s by German Jewish architects who immigrated to pre-state Israel during the British Mandate after the rise of the Nazis in Germany. Tel Aviv has the largest number of Bauhaus buildings of any city in the world. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was declared in the art museum that was located in Dizengoff House. By 1950, the city of Tel Aviv had grown and expanded, and it was renamed Tel Aviv-Jaffa to reflect the unified city and to preserve the historical name of Jaffa. Tel Aviv is the home of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the financial capital of Israel. It is also the centre of high-tech and start-up companies and a major centre of culture and entertainment, known for its active nightlife and the variety and quality of its restaurants.
Nahum Gutman - The illustrator, Nahum Gutman, was born in Russia and moved to Israel with his family in 1905. In 1912, he studied at the Bezalel School of Art. He was the main illustrator of Davar Layeladim and wrote a famous Israeli children’s book called Path of the Orange Peels: Adventures in the Early Days of Tel Aviv. In 1978, Gutman won the Israel Prize for children’s literature.
Anda Pinkerfeld Amir - Anda Pinkerfeld Amir was born in Poland in 1902 and joined the Hashomer Hatzair movement after a pogrom took place in Lvov in 1918. In 1920 she immigrated to Palestine with a group from Hashomer HaTzair. Anda and her husband lived on several kibbutzim and eventually settled in Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim, close to Jerusalem. In her youth Amir wrote and published poetry in Polish, but when she moved to Israel she began writing in Hebrew. After World War II, she was sent to work in the (DP) displacement peoples camps in Germany assisting the Holocaust survivors. Following her experiences in Europe, she was one of the first writers to write about the Holocaust. Amir wrote many children’s poems and stories, and her early poems were published in the children’s newspaper Davar. She wrote many nursery rhymes about animals, Jewish festivals, and events happening in Israel that have become Israeli children’s classics. In 1936 Anda Pinkerfeld Amir received the Bialik Prize for her children’s poetry and in 1978 she received the Israel Prize for children’s literature.
