Obj. ID: 55490
Jewish printed books  Sissu ve-Simchu be-Simchat 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 not gently treated during the celebrations, most were destroyed or discarded. 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.

This example was designed by Shlomo Yedidyah Seelenfreund, an active graphic designer and artisan in both Hungary and Israel for more than 50 years. Seelenfreund was born in Hungary in 1875. His father was the Rabbi of Szeged where Shlomo grew up.  From the age of 2 he had a religious education but went on to study graphic design and handicrafts in Budapest. After the studies he traveled, visiting studios in Germany and Italy. By the end of the 19th century his work was appearing in professional journals in Hungary and in 1903 he decorated the interior of the new synagogue in Szeged. He became associated with Raphael Patai and illustrated many of his publications, including the famous Mult es Jovo cultural and literary journal. In 1917 an exhibition of his work was mounted in Budapest. His work most often involved original and decorative ways of presenting Hebrew letters and it is possible to say that his approach influenced the works of the Bezalel School in Jerusalem, founded in 1906

He made Aliyah with his family to Eretz Israel in 1921 and melded into the community of artists in the country, being one of the founders of “The Society of Hebrew Artists”. By 1923 he had a design studio in the Old City where he carried out his designs and he himself worked in parchment, metal, and stone as well as designing for others. In 1929, the year he had an exhibition of his output in Jerusalem, his studio was destroyed in the riots. Later he relocated to Tel Aviv where he continued his original designs and works.