Treasure Trove: Flowers, Fifth Birthdays and Our Continuing History

Today, Treasure Trove celebrates fifth birthdays.

For its fifth Independence Day in 1953, Israel issued this stamp showing five anemones placed over the number five. The stamp was designed by the firm Wind-Struski which was the artist team of Willie Wolf Wind and Yehuda Struski. They were graphic artists and designers based in Tel Aviv. Willie Wind left Israel for Chicago in the mid-fifties where among other things he designed stamps for the United Nations and Ghana. The firm continued to operate until 1990.

The anemone pictured in the stamp (calanit in Hebrew) is the national flower of Israel. Each spring the calanit grows on hillsides throughout Israel giving bursts of red. It is also a sign of resilience. February is the peak of the calanit season and the residents of southern Israel hold an annual festival, Darom Adom or Scarlet South, for visitors to come and enjoy the flowers. The festival was cancelled in 2024 following the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, but it continues.

In 1945 the poet Nathan Alterman wrote a song called Calaniot about a young girl who gathers calaniot in a basket for her mother: “Storms will thunder and roar greatly but the calanit will always bloom.”

Connecting Israel’s history to current conditions is the goal of Treasure Trove which celebrates its fifth anniversary with this column. Since February 2, 2021 Treasure Trove has appeared weekly in the Canadian Jewish News (www.thecjn.ca). Each column shares one item in my collection and relates it to the events of the day.

I learned the subject “Jewish History” at Toronto’s United Synagogue Day School (now Robbins Hebrew Academy) and Tanenbaum CHAT in the 1970s. The courses taught that history has already happened, it is in the past. That is not the case.  Jewish history is being written now- we are living it and are a part of it. And living history now is difficult. Some of the experiences of the last few years that we have witnessed and shared are not pleasant and are sometimes horrible. But they are not unique. They connect directly to what our people have gone through before, and the circumstances of today are often directly related to the events of the past.

Illustrated by items in my collection, I try and make those connections when I can. I also try to use artifacts as reminders of past successes, inspirational people, important events, and moments of pride so that in all the current conflicts and challenges we don’t forget the wonder that is the State of Israel and the honor it is to be part of the Jewish people.

Since everything to do with Israel is so often enveloped in conflict, we may forget that its existence is a miracle and that we are privileged to live at a time when it exists. Items from the past illustrate the commitment and sacrifices that were required to create the State. Those efforts remain critical. What we are doing today to protect Israel and help it through this most difficult time will be the subject of the Treasure Trove columns of tomorrow.

Over the last five years I have showcased more than 250 items from my collection. You can see them all at  https://herzlcollection.com/treasure-trove. I have over 6,000 pieces, so I am just getting started. Thank you for reading Treasure Trove and for being part of the continuing story that is Jewish history.

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For more treasures from the Herzl and Zionism Collection of David Matlow, which has appeared weekly in the Treasure Trove column in the Canadian Jewish News (www.thecjn.ca) since February 2021, see  https://thecjn.ca/?post_type=_related_post_type&s=treasure+trove or https://herzlcollection.com/treasure-trove