Collection of Printed Items with "Shanah Tovah" Greetings – Sephardic Lands

Collection of Printed Items with "Shanah Tovah" Greetings – Sephardic Lands

18 printed items with "shanah tovah" greetings. Jerusalem, Alexandria, Casablanca, Djerba, Tripoli and other places, first half of the 20th century.
The lot comprises: • Embossed "shanah tovah" greeting card, accompanied by a card from the Ashkenazic synagogue in Alexandria, 1917 (French). • Printed leaf listing the Rosh Hashanah symbolic foods in Judeo-Persian, by Yedidia Yosofoff. Jerusalem: Zuckermann press, [first decades of 20th century]. • Card for Rosh Hashanah 5687 (1926) from R. Sabetay Joseph Djaen, rabbi of Bitola (Monastir, present day: Macedonia). • Printed leaf, for Rosh Hashanah 5697 (1936-7), listing segulot for each month of the year, by R. Avraham Ben Alloun, Casablanca • Booklet of prayers and segulot for the High Holidays and year-round. Djerba: Partners Idan, Cohen and Sabban, [ca. 1945]. • Shanah Tovah greeting card from the press of Simon Simon M. Dahan, Casablanca. • Printed letter sent to Yemenite Jews in the Aden transit camp from the Histadrut's Central Committee for Yemenite Matters. Rosh Hashana 5708 (1947). • Two "shanah tovah" greeting cards from Yitzchak Rachamim, Iraq. One dated 1947. Photographs on the front – the sender in the synagogue and a family boating on the Shatt al-Arab river, Basra. • "shanah tovah" card from R. Shlomo Illouz, chief rabbi of Tripoli (ca. 1946-1949). • And more.
Size and condition vary.
Provenance: Collection of Dr. Chaim Grossman.

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.