#468 Israel...Thanks Stefan!

The 4.65s stamp is from 1996 Jewish Composer series honoring Felix Mendelssohn.

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born, and generally known in English-speaking countries, as Felix Mendelssohn (3 February 1809 – 4 November 1847) was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period.

The grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, Felix was born into a notable Jewish family, although he himself was brought up initially without religion, and later as a Lutheran Christian. He was recognized early as a musical prodigy, but his parents were cautious and did not seek to capitalise on his abilities. Indeed his father was disinclined to allow Felix to follow a musical career until it became clear that he intended seriously to dedicate himself to it.

Early success in Germany was followed by travel throughout Europe; Mendelssohn was particularly well-received in Britain as a composer, conductor and soloist, and his ten visits there (during which many of his major works were premiered) form an important part of his adult career. His essentially conservative musical tastes however set him apart from many of his more adventurous musical contemporaries such as Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner and Hector Berlioz. The University of Music and Theatre Leipzig, which he founded, became a bastion of this anti-radical outlook.

Mendelssohn's work includes symphonies, concerti, oratorios, piano and chamber music. He also had an important role in the revival of interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing musical tastes and antisemitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his creative originality is now being recognized and re-evaluated. He is now among the most popular composers of the Romantic era.

#403 Israel...Thanks Ori!

These two stamps were issued in June 2010 illustrating Story Gardens in Holon.

Billing itself as a "children's city",Holon is a city in Israel, on the central coastal strip south of Tel Aviv.

#290 Israel...Thanks Nir!

This nice stamp is from 2009 Extreme Sports issue depicting Freefall Skydiving.

Parachuting, also known as skydiving, is the action of performing acrobatics during freefall, followed by deployment of a parachute.

The history of skydiving starts with Andre-Jacques Garnerin who made successful parachute jumps from a hot-air balloon in 1797. The military developed parachuting technology as a way to save aircrews from emergencies aboard balloons and aircraft in flight, later as a way of delivering soldiers to the battlefield. Early competitions date back to the 1930s, and it became an international sport in 1951.

Parachuting is performed as a recreational activity and a competitive sport, as well as for the deployment of military personnel Airborne forces and occasionally forest firefighters.

A typical jump involves individuals jumping out of an aircraft (usually an airplane, but sometimes a helicopter or even the gondola of a balloon), at approximately 4,000 meters (around 13,000 feet) altitude, and free-falling for a period of time (about a minute)[1] before activating a parachute to slow the landing down to safe speeds (about 5 to 7 minutes).

When the parachute crests (usually the parachute will be fully inflated by 2,500 feet) the jumper can control the direction and speed with toggles on the end of steering lines attached to the trailing edge of the parachute, and can aim for the landing site and come to a relatively gentle stop. All modern sport parachutes are self-inflating "ram-air" wings that provide control of speed and direction similar to the related paragliders. Purists in either sport would note that paragliders have much greater lift and range, but that parachutes are designed to absorb the stresses of deployment at terminal velocity.

By manipulating the shape of the body a skydiver can generate turns, forward motion, backwards motion, and even lift.

When leaving an aircraft, for a few seconds a skydiver continues to travel forward as well as down, due to the momentum created by the plane's speed (known as "forward throw"). The perception of a change from horizontal to vertical flight is known as the "relative wind", or informally as "being on the hill". In freefall, skydivers generally do not experience a "falling" sensation because the resistance of the air to their body at speeds above about 50 mph (80 km/h) provides some feeling of weight and direction. At normal exit speeds for aircraft (approx 90 mph (140 km/h)) there is little feeling of falling just after exit, but jumping from a balloon or helicopter can create this sensation. Skydivers reach terminal velocity (around 120 mph (190 km/h) for belly to Earth orientations, 150-200 mph (240–320 km/h) for head down orientations) and are no longer accelerating towards the ground. At this point the sensation is as of a hard wind.

Many people make their first jump with an experienced and trained instructor - this type of skydive may be in the form of a tandem skydive. During the tandem jump the jumpmaster is responsible for the stable exit, maintaining a stable freefall position, and activating and controlling the parachute. Other training methods include static line, IAD (Instructor Assisted Deployment), and AFF (Accelerated Free fall) also known as Progressive Free-Fall (PFF) in Canada.

#289 Israel...Thanks Stefan!

This block of 4 stamps was issued in 2007 illustrating Hula Nature Reserve.

The Hula valley has always been an important waystation for migrating birds shuttling between Europe and Africa. Lake Hula and the surrounding swamps were once a habitat for many species of plants and animal, some rare and even endemic.

In 1951 Israel launched the Hula reclamation project. Its planners' vision of turning these 23 square miles of lake and swamp into useful farming land, payed little regard to questions of nature preservation. Yet under pressure from scientists and nature lovers in Israel, who demanded that at least a small part of this lake-and-swamp landscape be preserved, the planners eventually agreed to allocate for this purpose some 790 acres of the lake's area. In 1964 this land was officially proclaimed as Israel's first nature reserve – the Hula Reserve. Representing most lake and swamp pre-reclamation habitats, it nevertheless irretrievably lost many species, including some of the endemic ones.

In the years since proclamation much effort was made to maintain characteristic fauna and flora on the one hand, and to make the reserve accessible to visitors, on the other hand. Nature lovers now visiting the reserve enjoy well-developed footpaths, consisting in parts of catwalks above swampy areas, as well as bird watching sites, intended to leave the reserve's birds and animals undisturbed.

More than 200 species of birds may be seen in the reserve. Tens of thousands of birds, including cranes, storks, pelicans, cormorants, herons and egrets, live permanently within the reserve, joined by huge flocks during migration seasons. Besides, numerous species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish may be seen, as well as a rich vegetation, including some rare water plants which find in the Hula reserve a unique sanctuary.

In the spring of 1994 an additional area of 247 acres was re-flooded, north of the extant reserve, representing another stage in the restoration of the Hula valley. The turfy soil exposed there during the original reclamation, having sunk down below its initial levels, has been seasonally flooded be rainwater, which made it useless for farming. The newly created lake, following this re-flooding, was dubbed "the Hula lakelet". It has rich fauna and flora, and species that were wiped out during reclamation are now being reintroduced there.

#131 Israel...Thanks Ori!

The 4.60 ILS stamp is from 2009 Israel-Romania joint issue depicting The Yiddish Theatre,the world's first professional Yiddish-language theater, in Iasi,Romania in 1876.

Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Central European Ashkenazi Jewish community. The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic revues; melodrama; naturalist drama; expressionist and modernist plays. At its height, its geographical scope was comparably broad: from the late 19th century until just before World War II, professional Yiddish theatre could be found throughout the heavily Jewish areas of Eastern and East Central Europe, but also in Berlin, London, Paris, and, perhaps above all, New York City.

Yiddish theatre's roots include the often satiric plays traditionally performed during religious holiday of Purim (known as Purimspiels); other masquerades such as the Dance of Death; the singing of cantors in the synagogues; Jewish secular song and dramatic improvisation; exposure to the theater traditions of various European countries, and the Jewish literary culture that had grown in the wake of the Jewish enlightenment.

On the tab is shown Abraham Goldfaden (1840-1908),who was an Ukrainian-born Jewish poet, playwright. stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays. Goldfaden is considered the father of the Jewish modern theatre.

In 1876 he founded in Romania what is generally credited as the world's first professional Yiddish-language theater troupe. He was also responsible for the first Hebrew-language play performed in the United States.

The stamp on the right corner is 2007 My Own Stamp issue.

The 1.60 ILS stamp at the bottom was issued in 2010 depicting Aravah, a leafy branch of the willow tree. It is one of the Four Species used in a special waving ceremony during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The other species are the lulav (palm frond), hadass (myrtle), and etrog (citron).

The aravah is also used for a separate ceremony on Hoshanah Rabbah, the last day of Sukkot, when five branches are beaten against the ground to the accompaniment of special verses.

The aravah tree typically grows by the side of a river, although in Israel it grows wild in many people's backyards. The branches grow long and are lined with long, narrow leaves. Since this tree requires much water to grow, the picked branches dry out within two or three days. In order to keep them fresh as long as possible for the mitzvah of the Four Species, they are kept in the refrigerator until use, or wrapped in a moist towel.

#034 Israel...Thanks Jacob!

The 5 NIS stamp is from Maritime Archeology issued on Nov.26,2009,illustrating some of the finds from sunken ships found along Israel’s shoreline and reflect the seafarers’ commercial ties and beliefs.

Remains from ancient cultures are abundant along the coastline of Eretz Israel. These remains are material evidence of the activity of the diverse civilizations which inhabited these shores over thousands of years.

Fifty years of underwater archeological research has uncovered many important sites, each with its own character and finds. The uniqueness of the finds lies in their generally good state of preservation and their rarity relative to archeological excavations on land. Every sunken ship preserves the moment of disaster as a sort of “time capsule” and contains much evidence regarding the technology of the vessel, the crew’s lifestyle and the ship’s cargo and sailing route.