Zionist Flags and other Proposals (Israel)

Last modified: 2005-01-22 by santiago dotor
Keywords: israel | zionism |
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• First Zionist Flag 1885
• Theodor Herzl 1896
• Second Zionist Congress 1898
• Zionist Congress 1918
• Jewish Cultural Congress 1924
• Flag on the SS Emanuel 1934
• Zionist Congress 1946
• Zionist flags on old cards

See also:

• First East Jewish Communities Congress (Russia)
• Warsaw Ghetto (Poland)
• Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet le'Israel / JNF / KaKaL)
• Israel

I recently found here postcards showing items from an exhibition entitled Blue-White in Colours that took place in 1996-1997. I assume that the exhibition was about Zionism reflected in postcards, greeting cards, posters etc. Some of the cards have flags on them:

• A Zionist Calendar for the Jewish Year 5664, St. Petersburg, 1903. The flag is in b/w so I'm not sure about the colours. It is divided horizontaly, the upper part is probably blue, the lower part white. On the blue half there are 7 stars, in gold/yellow or white. These are Herzl's 7 stars, but here they are 5-pointed instead of the usual magen-david like six-pointed stars. In the centre of the flag there is a large dark magen-david, probably in dark blue.

• The Ship of Redemption, greeting card for the new year, New York, 1925. There are two flags there, blue over white with a golden magen-david in the centre. Below the magen-david there are inscriptions in gold. On one flag, "...for out of Zion shall go forth the law" (which continues, "and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem", Isaiah 2,3). On the other flag: "The Labour Battalion". This was an organization of pioneers in the 1920's. Its members worked in road construction.

• The Daughter of Zion, greeting card for the new year, Germany, c. 1910. It shows a woman holding a long continous flag (streamer?). It is white, has two blue stripes like in the Israeli flag, but also two narrower stripes, in a lighter shade of blue, close to the wider ones. Between the inner stripes and in the same shade of blue, there are small magen-davids, running along the flag, with the word "Zion" in hebrew inside them.

Nahum Shereshevsky, 27 August 1998