Homemade Rosh Hashanah Cards
The first person to send a Rosh Hashanah greeting was Rabbi Jacob Halevi ben Moshe Moellin. He lived in the 14th century in Mainz. He concluded all of his correspondence with “L’Shanah Tovah Tikatevu,” “May you be inscribed for a good year.” Others followed his example. It is fun to continue this tradition today by making your own homemade Rosh Hashanah cards.
Introduction
The custom the Rabbi started of sending New Year's cards continued until the 19th century. It was then that printers began producing New Year’s greeting postcards. Initially these cards were blank. The card sending craze really took off between 1889 and 1918, when picture postcards were printed. These cards became a way for members of a family on both sides of the ocean to communicate, at least once a year. They featured family portraits, poems in Yiddish, artistic renditions of the Land of Israel, portraits of Zionist leaders, drawings of Jewish traditions, and scenes of arriving in America.
Ingredients
It is fun to continue this tradition today by making your own homemade Rosh Hashanah cards. We used watercolors and pastels to create joyful missives.
The traditional greeting is written like this:
שנה טובה ומתוקה
which means, “A good and sweet New Year.”
לשנה טובה
“May you be inscribed for a good year.”