Stamp review: Israel-Brazil joint issue (2020-09-08)

The "From Jaffa to Tel-Aviv and from Olinda to Recife" (henceforth: "Israel-Brazil") stamp was jointly issued by Israel Post and Brazil's Correios on 8 September 2020. Face valued at ₪11.80, corresponding to the postage rate for a domestic registered 0-50g letter, the stamp depicts two stretches of coastline, one on either side of a palm tree that splits the stamp down the middle: the coastline on the left starts at Olinda in Brazil and extends south to Recife, and the coastline on the right starts from Jaffa in Israel and extends north to Tel Aviv. The tab below the stamp proper features the flags of Brazil and Israel. Green and blue are the stamp's prominent colors. It was designed by Ronen Goldberg (רונן גולדברג) and Lidia Marina Hurovich Neiva, with input from Laís Botler of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

ככר אוסוולדו ארניה, ירושלים
צילום: אמיר אפסאי
PRACA OSWALDO ARANHA
DEDICADA AO NOBRE POVO BRASILEIRO
CONFEDERAÇÃO ISRAELITA DO BRASIL
Osvaldo Aranha Square, Jerusalem
"Dedicated to the Noble Brazilian People"
Photo: Amir Afsai (11 October 2020)

"Israel-Brazil" celebrates a rich history of diplomatic relations between the Israeli and Brazilian governments, as well as the two countries' ties in the domains of culture and bilateral trade. The key figure associated with relations between Israel and Brazil is Osvaldo Aranha (1894-1960). In his capacity as head of the Brazilian delegation to the United Nations, Aranha presided over the November 1947 vote at the U.N. General Assembly that paved the way for the establishment of a Jewish state in historic Israel. In order to secure a majority of two thirds in favor of Resolution 181, which was not initially forthcoming and without which the resolution would have failed, Aranha urged his colleagues at the U.N. to draw out their speeches long enough for the vote to be delayed and for him to shore up additional support on the Jews' behalf.

בול בנימין נתניהו
"Israel 70 Anos" personalized stamp
Correios (2019)

Just how friendly have Israel and Brazil's relations been over the years? Loosely speaking, a graph of the high and low points would take the shape of a "W." In May 1949, Brazilians were so eager to visit Israel that the latter, citing a lack of adequate facilities, had to turn down a proposal for 1,000 Brazilian tourists to arrive on a cruise ship.¹ In the 1970s, however, Brazil's military government began seeking closer ties with Mideastern regimes that were hostile to Israel and supported a U.N. General Assembly resolution declaring Zionism a form of racism.² Brazil transitioned back to democratic rule in the mid-1980s, and in 1991 it was among the sponsors of a U.N. General Assembly resolution overturning 1975's Zionism-is-racism declaration. The election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president of Brazil in 2003 ushered in a period of strained relations with Israel, culminating in 2014 when, under President Dilma Rousseff, Brazil recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv over fighting in Gaza. Under the leadership of Brazil's current president, Jair Bolsonaro, relations with Israel have flourished. When Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended Bolsonaro's inauguration ceremony in 2019, a personalized stamp commissioned by pro-Israel Brazilian Christians featuring Netanyahu received extensive coverage in the press.

בול ישראל
A New Millennium: "Israel" stamp
Correios (2001)

The official body charged with promoting Brazilian culture in Israel is the Brazilian Culture Center, or CCB (Centro Cultural Brasileiro), located in Tel Aviv. Part of the Brazilian Embassy, the CCB screens films, offers Portuguese language classes, and hosts art exhibitions and lecture series for the general Israeli public. Not far from Tel Aviv, the smaller town of Ra'anana is home to the largest concentration of Brazilian olim in Israel. Numbering around 400, the community has its own synagogue, where the Sabbath Torah sermon is delivered in Portuguese, and two restaurants, and it periodically arranges cultural events that cater to a Brazilian audience.^3,4,5

בול קהל צור ישראל
"Kahal Zur Israel" stamp
Correios (2001)

With the second-largest Jewish community in Latin America and as one of the more popular travel destinations for Israeli backpackers after their military service, Brazil boasts vibrant and dynamic Jewish and Israeli cultural scenes. Figuring prominently on the Jewish scene since 1948 is Confederação Israelita do Brazil, or CONIB, the Brazilian Jewish community's leading umbrella organization. Headquartered in São Paulo, CONIB sponsors major events, raises awareness to causes of the day, and serves as an interface between regional Jewish communities and the national government. Brazil's Israeli scene, meanwhile, is dominated by two forces: Israel's diplomatic missions, of which there are three in the country, and Israeli tourists, particularly adventure-seeking backpackers in their early twenties. Israel's embassy in Brasília and its consulates in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro engage in promotional outreach at college fairs, tourism expos and trade shows. Israeli backpackers are a regular fixture in places like Morro de São Paulo and Jericoacoara, where their impact on the local culture has been extensively documented.⁶

הנפקה משותפת ברזיל-ישראל
"Emissão Conjunta Brasil-Israel"
Brazil-Israel joint issue stamp
Correios (2020)

While "Israel-Brazil" received minimal attention in Israel upon being issued, news of "Brasil-Israel" was widely circulated on the internet in Brazil. The contrast reflects the reality that while philately in Israel is at best stagnant, in Brazil it is a thriving institution. In addition to operating an engaging website in three languages and being active on all major social media platforms, Brazil's Correios also maintains a regularly updated blog devoted exclusively to philately and partners with schools throughout the country to promote stamp collecting and letter writing among youth. In April of this year, FILABRAS: Associação dos Filatelistas Brasileiros was launched as a web-based philatelic club aiming to bring together collectors of Brazilian stamps from near and far and offering many of the benefits a physical club offers, including the opportunity to competitively exhibit, all while transcending the limitation of distance, which is the physical club's most inherent shortcoming.

ציור מקורי בצבעי מים: תל אביב
Original watercolor drawing of Tel Aviv beach
Lidia Marina Hurovich Neiva

Another contrast between "Israel-Brazil" and "Brasil-Israel" involves the manner in which each postal administration described its respective stamp. On the Israeli side, the stamp's official release notes included an introduction by Israel's ambassador to Brazil, Yossi Shelley, and highlighted the historical and geographical contexts of the stamp. No reference was made to the stamp's design beyond identifying the locations it depicts. In Brazil, on the other hand, the Correios website devoted three separate pages to the stamp, with the site's in-depth blog page focusing mainly on the creative process behind the design. Israel's stamp features the names of two designers: Ronen Goldberg beside the Israeli scene and Lidia Marina Hurovich Neiva beside the Brazilian scene. To the casual observer, the implication thereof is that each designer was responsible for his and her country's illustration and that the two illustrations were subsequently joined to form a single composition. Brazil's stamp, however, features only one designer's name: Lidia Marina Hurovich Neiva. The fact that Israel Post had nothing to say about the design while Correios only credited Neiva for it suggests it was Neiva who did most or all of the actual designing, with Goldberg's contribution being limited to the Israeli stamp's tab.

ציור מקורי בצבעי מים: רסיפה
Original watercolor drawing of Recife coastline
Lidia Marina Hurovich Neiva

On occasions such as the launch of a joint issue stamp, it is natural for the rhetoric of the countries involved to idealize the friendship between them. Minor details that support the desired narrative are played up, major details that oppose the desired narrative are played down. Ambassador Shelley's introduction to the "Israel-Brazil" release notes demonstrates this manipulation of language in the service of diplomacy:

Israel and Brazil are both pluralistic multi-cultural immigrant societies that appreciate the bonds between people, the human sacrifice and unity that strengthen us in our strongest and weakest moments. Both countries share common values, such as that of solidarity, which has been expressed over the years in international organizations, and through humanitarian aid and diplomatic relations.^7,8

In describing Israel and Brazil as immigrant societies, the ambassador's aim is to cite an experience with which audiences in both countries can identify and through which they can relate to each other. On a superficial level, the comparison is valid and effective: the populations of Israel and Brazil were profoundly impacted, numerically and in other ways, by waves of newcomers both before and after the countries gained formal independence. However, the comparison belies a crucial distinction that ultimately sets Israel and Brazil apart as much as it brings them together. As the nation-state of the Jewish people, Israel distinguishes between two kinds of immigration: Jewish immigration, or aliyah, and non-Jewish immigration, or hagira. The former is actively encouraged by the state and celebrated by the national ethos as part of a historical process of the Jewish diaspora returning to its ancestral homeland after a 2,000-year exile; the latter, while not necessarily frowned upon, is nonetheless treated as a separate phenomenon both at the bureaucratic level and by society generally. In Brazil, no such distinction exists: it is an immigrant society in the pure and unrestricted sense of the term.

ציור מקורי בצבעי מים: דקל
Original watercolor drawing of palm tree
Lidia Marina Hurovich Neiva

In sharp contrast to Abassador Shelley's brightly toned prose, Samuel Feldberg of the University of São Paulo, writing in a 2019 issue of The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, shared a starker perspective: "Brazil and Israel's common interests and characteristics are too few to warrant the development of an especially close relationship."⁹ While not mutually exclusive, the two viewpoints considered together suggest a more complex relationship than what a sentence or a few paragraphs can capture. In this regard, it is symbolic that the motif connecting the "Israel-Brazil" stamp's two coastline scenes is a fruitless palm tree. Is it an Israeli date plam or a Brazilian coconut palm? As Neiva explained, the tree is deliberately ambiguous,¹⁰ a neutral compromise. Features that would otherwise distinguish the Israeli variety from its Brazilian counterpart were avoided in favor of an idealized abstraction that would appeal equally to both sides.

ישראל-ברזיל: מעטפת יום ההופעה
"Israel-Brazil" first day cover
Israel Post (2020)

Bottom line: 5/5 -- Strong buy. Stamps that feature natural landscapes and wildlife don't typically score high on the Israel Stamp Reviews scale, because nature is more of a factor in the development of human culture than an expression of it, and stamps are at their best when they have something insightful to say in a cultural context. There are exceptions to this rule, such as February's "CMYK Color Printing," which used the image of a fish to demonstrate a technological innovation. The landscapes featured in "Israel-Brazil" are more urban than natural, reflecting the ways in which each country's people transformed a stretch of their coastline; and more importantly, on a deeper level, they are a commentary on the relationship between the two countries whose coastlines are represented. Lidia Marina Hurovich Neiva clearly put careful thought into her design and into the execution of her vision, delivering a stamp rich in detail that rewards patient observation. "Israel-Brazil" happened to be issued in an unusually strong month for new stamps from Israel Post. It is not the most visually striking or intellectually compelling stamp in its class, but it comes close enough to earn a perfect score.

ישראל-ברזיל: גליון בולים
"Israel-Brazil" 3×5 stamp sheet, #010726
Israel Post (2020)