Collection of "shanah tovah" cards, letters and souvenirs, sent to Jewish soldiers in the British army – volunteers from Palestine during WWII.
The lot comprises:
• "Shanah tovah" letter from the Jewish Agency (Rosh Hashanah Eve, 1943): "Dear friend […] May the new year bring victory to the free people". Typewritten; hand-signed by Eliezer Kaplan (one of the signatories of the Israeli declaration of independence and the country's first Minister of Finance).
• "The Jewish Yishuv to its soldiers, a gift for Rosh HaSanah 5704" (Hebrew) – JNF tree certificate (for planting a tree in the Soldier's Forest), with the original envelope enclosed.
• A gift for Rosh Hashanah 5706, to members of Kibbutz Ein Gev serving in the British army – eight cards with photographs of the kibbutz and a printed greeting (1945).
• Two printed "shanah tovah" greeting cards, with illustrations of Jewish soldiers.
• "To the Jewish soldier" (Hebrew), a handwritten "shanah tovah" greeting, from "Daphna Sakharov, three years and nine months old", Tel Aviv (1942).
• A greeting card with photograph of an aqueduct in the Jordan Valley.
• Handwritten letter sent to a soldier in the Jewish transport company 462 (1944), with the original envelope enclosed.
• And more.
14 items (several additional items enclosed). Size and condition vary.
Provenance: The Dr. Haim Grossman collection.

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.