Our Heart Answered with an Old Prayer
Wishes for a New Year from the Ghetto Fighters House Museum Archive - Online Exhibition
New Year’s felicitations on postcards, on greeting cards, and in letters have been a common Jewish custom for many years. Unsurprisingly, then, best wishes for a good year have been amassed over the years in the archives of the Ghetto Fighters House as artifacts from the estates of those who perished in the war or of survivors who chose to place their memoirs in our hands. When one dislodges New Year’s greetings from their original place and sets them on a timeline alongside other specimens of their genre, one obtains an interesting picture. At the exhibition, we display a flow of New Year’s felicitations as reflected in our archives, yielding a broad historical glance at the hopes that surged over time amid those days at the gateway to a new year.
The title of the exhibition is from Naomi Shemer’s song “On Rosh Hashana” (1971)
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The 20s and the 30s
The felicitations were sent over a period of several decades—before, during, and after the Holocaust. Many were posted in the first half of the twentieth century, predating World War II. Widespread at that time, above all, were illustrated, colorful, and ticking postcards, following a custom that began in Germany and spread to Eastern Europe and the United States. These greeting cards carry traditional and ideological symbols and manifestations of grand events in Jewish history.
During the War
New Year’s felicitations that date to the Holocaust are located appear in letters to family members and relatives. These messages express powerful yearning for a better future and a prayer: “May the clouds over our heads disperse.”
In retrospect, it is chilling to read a blessing from a Jewish father in Poland who wishes the following for his children in 1937: “Let us hope that all the evil will expire together with the old year.”
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After the War
Illustrated felicitations reappeared after the war, now combined with senders’ photography in black-and-white. The Magen David, the Israeli flag, date palms, and ships in which Jews immigrated to the Land of Israel are the most conspicuous motifs in these cards, along with national messages of victory and redemption.
