Period Poster 1975-2025

Almost all of us collect junk which we cannot bear to get rid of. Some keep every scrap of trivial paper, leaving their children the onerous task of sifting and dumping after their demise. Others are more selective, understanding how to separate the gold from the large amounts of dross. Once in a while, hanging on to clutter for long enough, turns the inconsequential into a little treasure of shmaltz.

In this case, Jonty Maresky’s timing was perfect. At a recent gathering, he mentioned that he had been sorting through years of “stuff” that had accumulated in his attic. When he produced four posters that had been stored and forgotten for decades, a wave of nostalgia swept over us for the warm, joyous memories they evoked.

It was 1975 at the time of year when madrichim of the Jewish youth movements in South Africa were doing their best to encourage their chanichim to attend the upcoming summer camps, we in Bnei Akiva included. (Actually it was more difficult to persuade the parents to give their permission. Sending a kid to camp cost money. But much more than that, it was a mission for a bunch of teens and early-twenty-somethingers, to convince responsible adults that they could be trusted to take care of and return precious offspring safe and sound, after 3 weeks in tents on the coast, with days-long train rides in the mix!)

One of our chevra, Ashley Lazarus, had a head for marketing and came up with what at the time, was quite an out-of-the-box idea. How about creating a poster, which we could hang up at the “snifim,” and perhaps local shuls, promoting our “machaneh”?

We thought this would be a great idea. We could write something up and make copies on the stencil machine at the Bnei office. (Remember that hand operated contraption that smelled of alcohol and produced fudged purple copies?) But as always, Ashley was thinking bigger. “No”, he said, “We should do a large scale, color poster, featuring a photograph, to make the camp concept more appealing.”  Well professional poster-printing was not a line item on the extremely frugal camp budget. But that did not present a problem for Ashley, rather a challenge. Never one to shy away from approaching people and organizations which had other more pressing items on their agendas, he went knocking on doors. And to our amazement, he came up with a sponsorship from none other than Coca Cola. To add hutzpah to Ashley’s lack of inhibition, he also appropriated the slogan which Coke had probably developed by way of a marketing team and a pile of money.

I am almost certain that the first poster was produced in 1975. It features a photo from the previous year’s camp, which captured the essence of what makes the experience so captivating.

Well that first experiment must have been successful because it was repeated thereafter. Who knows whether Ashley (“Slash” to his friends) was unsuccessful with a second approach to the esteemed beverage maker, but to cajole Sanyo to sponsor a Jewish kids’ summer camp was no smaller feat. That poster, featured pics from the 1975 camp as well as one taken at the Durban “winter seminar,” held earlier that same year. Once again he tweaked the Sanyo slogan, “Get Turned On,” to brilliant effect. The images of the 1977 edition included a “kennes,” hike, the train arriving at Mossel Bay station in 1976 and the sun setting over the camp site. The 4^th poster which I do not recall (perhaps “after my time,”) went for a more stylized drawn image, evoking the camp-goers as cool dudes!

This small collection invokes the “vibe” of a very special time in the lives of our peers. There is laughter, guitars and volleyball. A train pulls into a station, there are prayers on the beach as the sun rises and youngster’s pranks, and the forests are evergreen.

As I write, the 2025 Machaneh is in progress. The videos we are seeing describe a scene and vibe remarkably similar  to that of 50 years ago. And the camp poster features a font that might have been used all those decades ago. The only difference is that to sign up you need to visit the website rather than pick up the phone.

Fifty years after the appearance of that first poster some of our beloved friends who feature in the images are no longer with us. Ashley himself passed away just a few months ago. But it is our great fortune that almost all of the hevra who led the movement through those momentous years settled shortly after in Israel and remain to this day, a closely knit group who get together to jam, joke and hang around together. Thanks Jonty, for discovering and dusting off those posters.

Dedicated to the memory of Ashley Lazarus (1956-2025)

(If I erred with some of the details, please forgive me. After all, more than a little water has passed under the bridge.)