Obj. ID: 55471
  Sacred and Ritual  Ki me-Tzion Tetzei Torah, Jerusalem, circa 1935

The following description was prepared by William Gross:

Just after the festivals of the Jewish New Year in the fall of the lunar calendar is the holiday of "Simchat Torah", celebrating the end of the yearly cycle of the reading of the entire Torah and the beginning of the new cycle of that reading. It is customary during that celebration to dance ia circle around the synagogue carrying the Torah scrolls with great joy and song.  The Torah scrolls themselves were too large and too heavy to be carried by children. The custom developed of having the children carrying flags relating to the holiday during the celebratory dancing with the Torah Scrolls. These flags were made of paper and often decorated and attached to a stick to serve as the flag pole. In older times, an apple and a small lit candle were placed on top of that stick above the flag. The printing of such flags rather than hand-crafted flags appears to have developed in Lviv, Vilnius, and Warsaw in the second half of the 19th century. Since the flags were used by children on one day a year, were made of paper and were snot gently treated during the celebrations, most were destroyed ordiscarded. As true examples of ephemera, early examples are very rare. Since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, a large variety of such flags have been printed there.

There is probably no more non-permanent item of Jewish ephemera than the Simchat Torah flag. In use mainly by children and generally very inexpensive for purchase, the few flags that were not damaged during the Simchat Torah "Hakafot" were discarded after the holiday.  For the coming year flags were purchased anew. Therefore to find flags dating from more than 70 years ago is a rare occurrence indeed. This most beautiful example was printed in Eretz Israel during the British mandate period.  The design is adorned with multiple symbols, from the elaborate Torah Ark topped by the Tablets of the Law guarded by two Cherubim to the celebrating children, and containing the fabled four animals from the saying in the Mishnah and the necessary figures of Moshe and Aaron.