Check-in: Israel Philatelic Federation (2019-11-10)

Earlier this week I paid my first visit to the offices of the Israel Philatelic Federation in Tel Aviv. My main reason for visiting was to become a member of the Federation, since doing so unlocks a range of benefits that collectors otherwise don't have full access to, such as a quarterly magazine, a library, and reduced admission fees to events. This won't be an in-depth report on the Federation, its staff or its activities -- that I'll save for a later date -- but a few brief impressions accompanied by photos to convey a sense of what my visit was like.

The Israel Philatelic Federation is located in an office building at the corner of Tel Aviv's Allenby and Pinsker Streets, just a couple blocks east of the beach. The building exterior is run-down and makes for a poor first impression -- an AM:PM supermarket occupies most of the ground floor -- but it is typical of the area and belies the more cheerful surroundings that await once inside the building and after climbing to the first floor.

A plastic red sign hanging over a doorway and looking like a relic from the distant past -- some might say symbolically -- confirms that the Federation is close. It indicates that this is the "Central Bureau," although it is today the Federation's only active bureau. Two other agencies listed on the sign are Israel Post and the Philatelic Service, the former being a state-owned enterprise and the latter being a division of the former. The Federation operates independently as a grassroots nonprofit organization representing philatelists and stamp collectors, and it collaborates with the other two entities in areas where their interests overlap.

Past the doorway, visitors are greeted by framed posters of Israeli stamps on the corridor walls. In the case of the photo above, these are a three-stamp "Hanukka" (sic.) set from 1972 and a three-stamp "Happy Holidays" set from 1974.

The Federation consists of two rooms, one of which is an extensive research library containing books, journals, catalogs, and stamp collections from around the world. As a philatelic library, it is the only one of its kind in Israel. Members of the Federation have free access to the library during opening hours, are invited to consult the staff, and can take out books. When new stamp catalogs arrive and old ones are cleared off the shelves to make room, the old catalogs go on sale at a substantial discount off their cover price.

The second room consists of a main office and an adjoining side office. It was in the main office that my membership was processed, and it was also where I met Yoram Lubianiker, editor of Noson, the quarterly journal of the Israeli Association for Thematic Philately, and Moshe Burshtein, who coordinates the affairs of Jerusalem's lone philatelic club, which meets every Sunday. Having been unsuccessful in my attempts to track down other stamp collectors in Jerusalem beyond the dealer whom I'd visited in October, the encounter with Burshtein was especially fortuitous.

The side office is where Tibi Yaniv (pictured above), coauthor of the Israel Stamp Catalog, pores over piles of stamps and painstakingly tucks them away one by one in their appropriate album. A completely random topic of conversation Yaniv and I wandered into led him to gift me a 1977 six-stamp Equatorial Guinean minisheet featuring nude drawings of the female body, just as I was getting ready to leave. It is as of now the most unusual item in my collection.

The side office is also where I was introduced to Lilach Gilad, executive director of the Federation and editor of its quarterly magazine, Shovel. Gilad's most recent article in the magazine (Sep. 2019) is an intriguing analysis of the role Palestinian stamps are playing in the struggle against Israel for control of the historical narrative.

My contact leading up to the visit at the Federation offices was Yael Vilner, and it was her enthusiasm that persuaded me to make the trip there from Jerusalem. By the time I was ready to leave the offices, two hours after my arrival, my backpack was stuffed with a variety of philatelic literature, all compliments of the house. This included back issues of Shovel, the latest issue of Noson, a 2016 catalog, workbooks for school kids, a stamp-themed Passover Haggadah, and a stamp-themed Book of Esther.

Objectively speaking, philately is probably experiencing the same pressures on its growth in Israel that it is experiencing elsewhere in the world. My subjective experience, however, in the short time I have been involved in the field, is that philately is still very much alive in Israel -- largely thanks to the hard work and dedication of passionate individuals like the ones I met at the Israel Philatelic Federation in Tel Aviv.