800

  • Issue: May 2008
  • Designer: Yigal Gabay
  • Sheet Size: 85 mm x 150 mm
  • Stamp Size: 30.8 mm x 40 mm
  • Sheet of 3 stamps
  • Printers: E. Lewin-Epstein Ltd.
  • Method of printing: Offset

The stamps in the souvenir sheets depict scenes of life in Ahuzat Bayit, the neighborhood that preceded Tel-Aviv. The texts are taken verbatim from Nahum Gutman’s book “A Little City and Few Men Within It”. Portions of Shlomo Shva’s introduction to the book, in which he calls Nahum Gutman’s Ahuzat Bayit “a childhood paradise”, also appear.

A Childhood Paradise

“…Nahum Gutman immigrated to the Land of Israel with his parents in 1905, at age seven. When he was twelve years old his family moved to a new neighborhood built adjacent to Jaffa – Ahuzat Bayit, later called Tel-Aviv – which was more than just a place to live. It was the Zionist utopia, an example of what the Hebrew-Jewish entity would look like once established in the Land of Israel and for the boy, the new neighborhood, with its white stone houses peeking out from among the hills, its clean streets and orderly plant-filled boulevards, was like a childhood dream come true.

Nahum Gutman is the main person to fix the image of the early days of Ahuzat Bayit and Tel-Aviv in our minds. He did so by writing and drawing decades after the incidents occurred but we have accepted these descriptions as the true image of the fledgling city.

We imagine Ahuzat Bayit, the original Tel-Aviv, in the way Nahum Gutman described and when we write or speak of it, we speak of Gutman’s pictures.
Tel-Aviv appears in Gutman’s writings as a community of people who care for each other and do only good – a neighborhood immersed in sunlight which embraces it in the arms of love (he also created a painting of that image). A city with no suffering, the city of the Zionist dream…”

The First Streetlight

Installation of the first streetlight, the Lux lantern, was a central event in the life of Little Tel-Aviv. It represented not only the entry of civilization into the neighborhood, but also culture. “And the young neighborhood now has a center. The first streetlight in Tel-Aviv.”

The First Concert

A rich cultural life has characterized Tel-Aviv ever since it was founded. The first concert symbolized an affinity for European culture. The house in which the concert took place became “the center of the world” during those hours. Tel-Aviv quickly became the center of art, literature, poetry, music, journalism, etc.

The Physician Dr. Hissin

Dr. Hissin used to visit his patients riding a donkey. Gutman describes him as a figure very much loved by “Jews, Arabs and Christians” alike. “Therefore, the children would smile in the street at the mere sight of his back, because they remembered the sweet medicines they got from him. The mothers would stop wiping the dishes and hurry to the window to send him a well wishing gaze. And an old Arab walked rapidly toward him on rheumatic legs to lay “wet flowers” on Dr. Hissin’s saddle.”

Edited by: Yinon Beilin

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Tel-Aviv Centennial - Nahum Gutman