36 posters advertising Purim celebrations in Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv, 1921-1935.
Collection of posters devoted to Purim celebrations in Tel Aviv during the 1920s and 1930s, documenting different events that took place in the course of the Purim festival and the preceding days.
Posters include: numerous advertising posters for the Purim balls organized by Baruch Agadati and the "Adloyada", a poster issued by the Palestine Rail Company advertising discounted rides to Tel Aviv for the Purim celebrations, advertising poster for a "Special Ball to Elect the Yemenite Queen Esther" issued by "Tze'irei HaMizrachi", advertising poster for the masquerade organized by "HaBama Haivrit" and "HaMaccabi", poster of the "Palestine Theater Company", informative posters of the "Committee for Organizing the Celebrations and the Adloyada Carnival" of the Tel Aviv Municipality or the "JNF Organizing Committee", and more.
"Beginning in the city's first years, Purim celebrations fulfilled a significant role in Tel Aviv's cultural life. In the late 1920s-early 1930s the celebrations became a kind of national holiday, with the masses rushing to Tel Aviv from the major cities, from colonies and even from abroad to take part in the balls and watch the carnival procession.
Tel Aviv's cultural life in those years was characterized by Western influence, on the one hand, and on the other hand, an aspiration to create an original, local culture and lifestyle. […] The Purim celebrations became part of this trend of adopting European forms yet filling them with local Hebrew content. Agadati's masquerades adopted several prominent features of European carnivals. […] However, the masquerades also bore a distinctly local flavor. The halls were hung with sumptuous decorations based on the stories of the Book of Esther. Many costumes were inspired by those stories and by the way of life in the East and in Palestine, while also reflecting political, economic, social and cultural events in the life of the Yishuv. Tel Aviv, being the venue of the celebrations, gained a central status in this context […] the costume competition, which was the main event at the masquerades, rewarded the most original costumes with valuable prizes, all of them produced locally - gifts from local factories […] by choosing the Hebrew Queen Esther Agadati sought to convey a national-Zionist message and to fuse Jewish history with the present time in Palestine. At children's celebrations and processions held by the Jewish National Fund and the Tel Aviv Municipality, children appeared in costumes bearing explicitly Zionist messages, intended to reflect and extol the achievements of the Zionist enterprise".?(Batia Carmiel, from the introduction to the catalogue "Tel Aviv in Costume and Crown, Purim Celebrations in the Years 1912-1935". Tel-Aviv: Eretz Israel Museum, 1999).
Size and condition vary. Some posters in a landscape format. A number of posters (from early years) are in poor condition, with many tears and creases. Most of the posters show minor creases, small tears along edges and fold lines.