COVER N.31 - Israel

Postmark:  - 29JUN2021, Tel Aviv - Yafo
Posted on the  the  29th June; received on the 12th August.
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Being a member of the London Cover Circuit Club made it possible to inscribe another nation in my growing philatelic atlas, with the addition of a cover sent from Israel. Thanks you so much Yair.

Counting the days between the posting date and my receiving it, I compute 45, and I guess that this is still the pernicious effect of the disruption in postal services brought about by the pandemic showing its teeth. Anyway, what really maters is that a cover kindly and carefully posted on the far east corner of the mediterranean has found its way home to the westernmost country of Europe.

With my postal items collection being still in its infancy, every new cover that I get, especially if  hailing from a country previously  unknown to my letterbox,  fills me up with a joy that I admit to be a bit puerile, as if I was finally  taking revenge from those primary school days when I'd  envy the trading card albums of colleagues that I so much wanted also to have but could not, because choices had to be made (what little coins I managed to amass would end up traded at the barber's shop by a second hand comics book).

Back then trading cards were also quite different from nowadays. Agência Portuguesa de Revistas - a Portuguese publisher who had the rights for Portugal for really significant stuff like the comic strips from King features Syndicate, for instance - also published trading card collections and yes, there were soccer players collections, but there were also far nicer collections on various other general knowledge themes like the history of Portugal, with cards that were themselves a genial exercise of comics book design style,  or the wonders of the natural world...

Anyway my cards are now different, but the pleasure I get from them is the same I used to get from that saturday morning trip to the barber's shop to trade the 25 tostões coin (two and a half escudos, the then official Portuguese monetary unit) by  the latest adventure of Cisco Kid or The Phantom, the ghost who walks... 

but, I digress again... and all this because of a cover I got from Israel...

Stamps, left to right:

10 new agora auto-adhesive stamp issued on 28AUG2014, with the same design and face value  of a normal gummed stamp issued earlier in february of the same year. The flower illustrated in the stamp is the gerbera.

The 2,5 new shekel stamp is part of a 3 stamp set complemented by a souvenir sheet on "Meetings of Peace".  These stamps, issued on 15DEC2020, illustrated with biblical episodes, bear witness to the need for understanding and covivence between different cultures that is central to the Israely history of yore and today.

The Israel post website was the source for the biblical citation this stamp refers to:

“At that time Abimelech and Phicol, chief of his troops, said to Abraham… swear to me here by God… deal with me… loyally as I have dealt with you… and Abraham said I swear it… and they concluded the pact at Beer-sheba” (Genesis 21:22-32).

The other 2,5 new shekel stamp was issued on 09APR2018,  on the occasion of the year's celebrations of the Israel Memorial Day, a remembrance day for the fallen soldiers of the wars of Israel and the victims of actions of terrorism.

My complete ignorance of the Hebrew alphabet only allows me to read the part of the postmark with the name of the place where the cover was mailed: Tel Aviv - Yafo