keep those cards coming

chang­ing technologies

Most peo­ple who know me under­stand that I am not averse to tech­no­log­i­cal change. I have been inter­ested in how com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies have been used and changed for many years. In June of 2010, I wrote about my involve­ment in the devel­op­ment of what I called “the elec­tronic leaflet”. When I was in col­lege I stud­ied music and was involved in per­form­ing “renais­sance music” on my recorder at the same time, as I have writ­ten here before, I pro­duced and was the disk jockey for “avant garde” music on the radio pro­gram “Catch­ing Up” on KPFK I had with my brother. My inter­est in chang­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies led me to write my rab­binic the­sis on ”The Rab­binic Per­cep­tion of Print­ing as Depicted in Haskamot and Responsa (con­tem­po­rary with the inven­tion of print­ing). I wanted to learn what the rab­bis con­tem­po­rary with the inven­tion of the new tech­nol­ogy felt and thought about it (there was pre­cious lit­tle information).

The Google books QR Code for my the­sis:

let­ters and cards

One item that print­ing enabled was the devel­op­ment of postal sys­tems. Once you could print on paper that had a dried glue on the back that you could use affix to an enve­lope or card, writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tions between peo­ple who lived far from each other increased greatly. It meant that the sender of an item paid for its deliv­ery in advance. Among the many items sent were cards with pho­tographs or illus­tra­tions on them: the postac­ard.

Jews around the world par­tic­i­pated in this devel­op­ment. As the Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion spread across Europe to Amer­ica and beyond, the abil­ity to hold some­thing writ­ten and tan­gi­ble gained deep import. Peo­ple spoke of hav­ing papirene kinder “paper chil­dren” because the only evi­dence they had of them was the let­ters they hope­fully received. The con­cept has made it into a 2003 novel by Martha Blum called Paper Chil­dren, and a Yid­dish song that seems to date from the ear­li­est part of the 20^th cen­tury. Deeply poignant is the movie A Briv­ele Der Mamen, the title song from which, writ­ten at least 30 years ear­lier, rends the heart and brings tears to the eyes. The song was first recorded by it’s com­poser Solomon Smule­witz in 1908. It became pop­u­lar on its own with cov­ers by The Barry Sis­ters. It begins in three-quarter time, but the famous lyrics, as sung by the pop­u­lar singer Al Bowlly are a fox trot.

The ver­sion on YouTube by Dudu Fisher includes (what I think is) a still from the 1938 movie (note the enve­lope on the table):

still from “a briv­ele der mame”

rosh hashan­nah correspondence

Post­cards at the time of Rosh haShan­nah played an impor­tant role. As explained in an online exhibit Past Per­fect at the Jew­ish The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary of America:

The ear­li­est and largest num­ber of Jew­ish pic­ture post­cards were cre­ated for Rosh Ha-Shanah greet­ings. The cus­tom of send­ing a New Year’s mes­sage is doc­u­mented as early as the four­teenth cen­tury when the Maharil, Rabbi Jacob of Moellin (1360?-1427) [in Mainz of all places; he died just under 25 years before Guten­berg devel­oped mov­able type there, cen­turies before post­cards], rec­om­mended that dur­ing the month of Elul one should include wishes for a good year in all writ­ten cor­re­spon­dence. This cus­tom spread widely through­out the Ashke­nazic world.

Some lovely cards are avail­able at the JTSA site. You can see many more at the Magnes Museum site. You can almost always find some old Rosh haShan­nah post­cards to pur­chase on eBay. and you can buy new cards that you can write on at zaz­zle. One of the rea­sons I have enjoyed receiv­ing hard, ana­log, phys­i­cal, printed-on-paper Rosh haShan­nah cards is that I can dec­o­rate my Suc­cah with the cards I’ve received from friends and fam­ily that year. It is a phys­i­cal form of ush­pizin.

I find it cute and intrigu­ing that one of the older cards depicts a newer mode of communication:

a lit­tle meta

I rarely write about the process of main­tain­ing this site. Some may notice that I change the color scheme on an annual basis. The col­ors for links, block­quotes, tables, and other fea­tures are based on the col­ors of the image you see at the top of the (at this writ­ing) right side­bar. That image is a minia­ture of a linoleum block print that I pre­pare and send out as my own Rosh haShan­nah greet­ing card. Since 1996 I have used a por­tion of my sum­mer (at one time at camp (Swig or New­man)) to pro­duce a linoleum block (or other visual). Each block rep­re­sents a verse from clas­sic Jew­ish texts. Ini­tially, (usu­ally) these texts were from the book of Psalms, but now they range much more widely. Each text becomes a mini visual midrash. I col­lect them here for your view­ing pleasure.

Psalm 16:8	1996	For a new year of peace
Psalm 113:3	1997	May the year 5758 bring bless­ings of peace from east to west…
Isa­iah 45:7	1998	May the year 5759 bring bless­ings of peace in both light and darkness.
Psalm 119:1	1999	May the new year 5760 bring bless­ings of peace as we con­tinue on our way.
Psalm 92:13	2000	May jus­tice… and with it peace flour­ish in the new year 5761.
Psalm 90:12	2001	May we gain hearts of wis­dom, so that the year 5762 will be one of peace.
Psalm 118:19	2002	May acts of right­eous­ness in the year 5763 open the Golden gates of Mercy and lead to a world of peace.
Proverbs 3:17b	2003	May all our paths in the com­ing year 5764 lead us toward peace.
Sifra to Psalm 18:11–12 and Sid­dur: Ma’ariv: Hashkiveinu	2004	May our efforts in the year 5765 spread clouds of glory as we build true taber­na­cles of peace.
Lamen­ta­tions 3:52	2005	May our endeav­ors in the year 5766 release all that threat­ens to ensnare us, giv­ing wing to a world of peace, bless­ing and joy. [In mem­ory of Faye (Faigie, Fan­nie (Avrunin)) Hurvitz Tzip­po­rah bat Meir v’Jannah 21st of Tevet 5674 — 8th of Tam­muz 5765; Decem­ber 20, 1913 (the win­ter sol­stice) — July 14, 2005]
Leviti­cus 25:10	2006	May our endeav­ors in the year 5767 pro­claim lib­erty through­out the land, cre­at­ing a world at peace.
Psalm 118:5	2007	May our voices spread from the nar­row places to the broad spaces call­ing for jus­tice and peace in the year 5768.
Psalm 118:22	2008	In our efforts to build a world at peace may we see the poten­tial in every stone.
Leviti­cus 19:10b	2009	As we gather our share in the new year may we live in a world of plenty and of peace.
Pirei Avot 1:2	2010	May we secure our world on a foun­da­tion of learn­ing, ser­vice and deeds of loving-kindness.
Gen­e­sis 1:1–2	2011	May our efforts in the new year bring new cre­ation out of chaos.

I often spend the months imme­di­ately fol­low­ing Pesach think­ing of a verse that would be appro­pri­ate and could be expressed visu­ally. This year’s card is made of two blocks. I did not know it would work this way, but the shop where I usu­ally pur­chase the linoleum had a block approx­i­mately twice the size of what I wanted. I was able to find some­one who could cut it in half, and then I had two pieces to work with. In recent years, more of the cards have reflected some­thing in my life at the time; this year is one of them.

• I took the two verses:

בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ. וְהָאָרֶץ, הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, וְחֹשֶׁךְ, עַל-פְּנֵי תְהוֹם; וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים, מְרַחֶפֶת עַל-פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם

• I removed all the vow­els and dupli­cate (as well as final form) let­ters. This left me with [set one]:

  א ח י כ ל מ נ ע פ צ ר ש

• I removed/separated those that form the phrase [set two]:

  תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ

• I ran­dom­ized the remain­ing letters.
• These two sets formed the two linoleum cuts:
  ran­dom­ized (the let­ters, and the cuts that make up the design, enclose a rounded area):
  

  ran­dom­ized letters

  remain­ing (the letters/words, read right to left, then flipped… and right to left again, form a shape in the fetal posi­tion while the cuts that extend from the let­ters shoot off in all directions):

  

  tohu va vohu

• I printed the silver-gray block and then, on top of that the red block:
  

  gen­e­sis 1:1–2

what­ever happened?

In the days when I taught my Intro­duc­tion to Judaism class, part of the les­son for Rosh haShan­nah was to explain the value of mak­ing con­tact with fam­ily and friends, as Chris­tians do at Christ­mas. In a sense, it is a way to ping some­one. I send out a card to every mem­ber of my extended fam­ily for whom I have a geo­graph­i­cal address as well as numer­ous friends and asso­ciates. Often I receive a card in response. Some­times a card comes back with “address unknown” or “past for­ward­ing time”. Oth­ers respond by send­ing an elec­tronic greet­ing, or, there are fam­i­lies who send out a “this is what our fam­ily has been up to this past year” let­ter. Gen­er­ally, if I do not receive any kind of response after three to five years, I drop that recip­i­ent from the list (those of you who hap­pen to read this and are on the list… be fore­warned). Because I have included a num­ber of peo­ple with whom our par­ents cor­re­sponded I some­times receive notes back let­ting me know that a par­tic­u­lar per­son has died in the past year and I notify my sibs as we take note of the pass­ing of time and generations.

I usu­ally print enough cards so that our chil­dren can use them to send to their extended fam­ily and friends. How­ever, other than that, it seems fewer peo­ple each year send cards out on their own. This sad­dens me, but, it seems that, other than mod­el­ing the behav­ior I like, I am pow­er­less to change the situation.

keep them coming

I don’t know if these phrases are used any longer, but there was a time when they played a sig­nif­i­cant role in Amer­i­can pop­u­lar culture.

Thank you for all those cards and let­ters:

Keep those cards and let­ters com­ing in
(which I under­stand was a spe­cial part of The Dean Mar­tin Com­edy Hour”) though this is from a dif­fer­ent source:

not averse to change

Yes, I do miss receiv­ing those phys­i­cal cards. But, that does not mean that I will not express my Rosh haShan­nah greet­ings in a less “tra­di­tional” man­ner. I will wish my Twit­ter fol­low­ers a Shan­nah Tovah (with a link to this page). I will also add a note to my Face­book page that I’ve updated this site in honor of the new year, and I will even share the first para­graph of this, with a link on Google+. Beyond those vir­tual wishes, I often wear this but­ton dur­ing the period lead­ing up to and imme­di­ately fol­low­ing Rosh haShannah.

l’shanah tova

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jacket you no longer wear, or poked into a cork-board on your wall. If you have any lay­ing around that you do not feel emo­tion­ally attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple. At some point they will all go to an appro­pri­ate museum. You can see all the but­tons shared to date.